


running with the wolves

by QueenBelladonna



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Found Family, Green Creek AU, I have been forced to add: the beginning can be read as kandreil, Implied Seth/Allison/Renee I guess, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Not A/B/O dynamics, Rated Mature for language and violence, Secondary Couples, Urban Fantasy, Werewolf!everyone else, Witch!Neil, alternate universe - witch, everytime my betas told me to add angst I wrote another fluff scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-10-21 05:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 59,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20688269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenBelladonna/pseuds/QueenBelladonna
Summary: His mother always told him he should never trust a wolf. They tell you pretty lies, they use you, and when they don't need you anymore, they tear you apart.Neil is half-mad and desperate, however, and when Wymack asks for his help in exchange for a place in the pack he accepts it. He thinks he knows what to expect from them. He thinks he's ready for it. But what he finds is a near-feral turned wolf, a face from the past he's been running from for years and a family, ready to accept him into it.





	1. ink and ozone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the AFTG 2019 Big Bang, during the worst year of my life, and I've never been more proud of anything! I wanted to thank [ClockworkDragon](http://c-dragon-art.tumblr.com) for the amazing art you will see in the next chapter, [ Faia Sakura](https://faiasakura.tumblr.com) and [NekoClair](https://nekoclair.tumblr.com) for the beta and all three of them for supporting me and helping me finish this.  
Also, Niko and Bela are amazing and deserve all the love you can give them! Thank you two for your patience and kindness and, obviously, thank you for organizing the event!

When Nathaniel was ten, his mother woke him up in the middle of the night whispering "Put on some clothes." The previous week it'd been his birthday; the night before his father had finally finished the tattoo he'd been slowly carving around his neck like a collar, now going all the way to his shoulders. Nathaniel had been sleeping in weird positions the whole week because of how much it hurt.

He woke up with a quiet start, and his mother tossed some clothes at him and told him to change, not even stopping to explain – not that he asked her to; it'd been building for years now, and he was just relieved it was finally happening. When he was done, he helped her pack his duffle bag and they left, silent steps through the house and out into the front yard, making a path that would keep them away from the security cameras.

A week later they took a plane to Cardiff, and with her brother’s help they moved into a small house somewhere in the countryside of her home country with too many cows, long empty fields, small patches of forests and almost permanent bad weather.

He loved it.

Stuart left them alone most of the time, and Mary sang every morning and night, her music-based magic reinforcing the protections around the house. He’d spend days out in the woods behind the house, coming back late at night just a little bit more grown up than when he left. He was Abram, then, never Nathaniel, and he was free _free free_.

The best part, however, was the magic – the whispers of pixies in the wind, the house familiars joining Mary's songs as she made breakfast, childlike laughter from the kitchen when a brownie found the cookies left on the windowpane for them, big paw-marks on the grass in the backyard, where the grass met the outskirts of the forest. He studied magic alone or with help, when he managed to convince the fairies to help him, and trained with his mother whenever she could. He learned more about himself and the world around him than he'd ever thought possible. He learned how to protect himself with and without magic, and designed his second and third tattoos – first a protection circle on his chest, all in old welsh; then his cat familiar on his back.

They asked Stuart for books on ink-based magic and took turns reading everything they got their hands on. After weeks of learning, Mary tattooed him herself – having refused to let anyone near him with needles – and they spent a whole afternoon of magic and ink to weave the spells onto him.

His skin ached and itched when the cat moved around, and it’d taken some time for him to get used to it whispering in his ears. But it was his familiar, his protector, and now they were one, so he learned to understand it.

His mother had no tattoos of her own. Mary's family, the Hatfords, had blood from the seas running in their veins – though they weren’t sure if it was from Selkies or Sirens or Merpeople – so they sang their magic instead of carving it. Abram could do it too, but Mary insisted on him learning any and every kind of magic he could, especially silent ones; so Stuart brought them books and books, with glyphs and sigils from every culture he could get his hands on, magic written and drawn. It was his father's magic, inherited together with his looks and temper. He hated it, even though he knew it was irrational, even when they realized how much it got in the way of his casting, even after his mother’s best efforts to beat it out of him failed.

Some days, his cat would whisper _‘There’s something in the backyard’_ or _‘by the front door’_ and after telling mom, they’d spend hours locked inside by key and spells, waiting for whatever it was to leave, or Mary would go out for hours and come back looking tired and smelling of magic and blood.

_(Sometimes, though, it would whisper _‘Kitchen’_ or _‘Living room’ _or _‘Near near near’_ and Abram wouldn’t tell his mother a thing.)_

Then he was twelve, and his mother woke him up one morning with all their things already packed; his cat was screaming inside his head, _‘here here here’_, and everything was happening too fast for him to understand. One moment they were in the kitchen and Mary was wiping away the small salt circle they always left on the dining table, the next they were outside in the forest walking a path of dirt and fallen leaves, and Abram found his breath for long enough to tell her she’d forgotten to lock the back door, but she only snapped at him to be _quiet_. It took him a while to understand that they were leaving; and an even longer time to understand that they’d never come back.

For the next few years, they ran, lied, took whatever they wanted or needed, and pretended to be anyone but themselves. Mary never explained why they’d left, and after some time Abram gave up asking. He hated all of it, but he loved his mother. She was his family, his tether, and he would do anything for her.

During that time, he added some more tattoos to his collection: a little key on his right middle finger that could open and close any ordinary lock, layers upon layers of wards and protection spells in every language they learned, and a single stem of wolfsbane in watercolors – for desperate times. He was Alex, Stefan, Chris, Isaac, Gabriel, but never Abram. Some days, he hated his mother for taking that away from him. Most days he loved her because he knew she did it so he’d never have to be Nathaniel again.

At sixteen, they went back to North America – first Canada, then the States. By then his mother was a completely different person. She didn't sing anymore, didn't really use magic at all. She still taught him sometimes, but she had few good days, and even fewer sane ones.

Around that time, Abram understood that just because his mother was his tether, it didn’t mean he was _hers_.

Sometimes he’d feel her magic like something physical, something alive and trying to force its way out of her body. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep at night, suffocating under the sheer presence of it. He learned to block his cat’s whispers out, tired of hearing it insist his mother was the actual danger.

On his seventeenth birthday, they broke into a tattoo parlor in Seattle after he’d decided his next tattoos: a group of four triangles, each one representing an element: earth, fire, air, water. They were simple and small, lined one under the other, two on his right forearm, two on his left, but they made him feel secure in a way he never did before. When they healed, he sometimes slept at night to the sound of strong winds and cresting waves, the rustling of leaves and the crackling of fire. Through it all, the lightning scar tattoos his father had given him all those years ago remained silent and still.

Abram was nineteen when his father finally found them. He remembers little of the encounter: his cat screaming wordlessly inside his head, his father’s coven getting closer and closer and, finally, his mother’s magic breaking free and destroying everything around them. His protection spells saved his life again and again as they fled and his mother sang for the first time in years in a voice he’d never heard, calling for help from the sea mothers, and Abram didn’t understand her words until it was too late, and the storm hit them.

They ran, hoping the water would wash away their scents and the downpour would hide them from prying eyes, and Abram’s lightning tattoos shone electric blue in time with the thunders and lightning above, shaking him to the bone with every burst of energy.

_(Later, he’d read in a newspaper it’d been the worst storm to hit the coast in decades – an unexpected typhoon that left hundreds of people homeless. Later, he’d wonder at his mother’s power. Later, he’d feel guilty for it, the lengths she’d go to keep him safe.)_

He was nineteen when his mother died beside him on a beach in California, their car smelling of ozone and saltwater and smoke. She died with a sigh, no noise, her hand still clutching his shirt, and the storm only calmed down two days later. For two days he screamed, but the sea didn’t answer. He sang, but nothing happened. He begged, then cried and cried and cried. Then, he burned their stolen car and threw her ashes into the sea, singing Mary back home into the deep.

At nineteen, Abram became an untethered and unbound witch. It took days for his tattoos to stop moving, his skin buzzing with magic and fear and anger and sorrow. His _mother tether family_ was_ gone gone gone_ and nothing else seemed to matter.

When Abram’s survival instincts overcome his grief, Neil Josten is born: one year younger with two very busy parents that chose Millport for its convenient location and very cheap living cost. Neil Josten is a sensible, responsible boy who can take care of himself. His teachers are understanding, the locker room has a cheap lock he doesn’t even need magic to open, and even when he can't sleep there, there are plenty of vacant houses for him to break into. Millport is a dying town. He fits in in more ways than one.

Even though his whole being begs him to keep running, he stays. It takes a while, but his magic settles, too. He uses long sleeves and baggy clothes almost all the time and pretends not to notice the rumors that run around the school – and eventually the city – about him. Some days his cat whispers _‘safe safe safe’_ and others it cries _‘alone alone alone’_. Still, he survives. And stays. He finds a job at the only bookstore in town; he has no idea what he'll do when school is over, but he’s pretty sure it'll involve running.

That's when fate changes its course.

It starts with his cat familiar chanting _'they are coming coming coming'_ for a whole week in the back of his head and refusing to elaborate even when asked, making it very hard for him to concentrate on his finals. Then, a failed break-in: he's coming back to the house he'd spent the last month in and there's a car on the driveway. When he comes closer, he sees the kitchen lights on, and movement behind the curtains.

He thinks _'Shit'_ and _'Did I forget anything'_ and _'No, no I didn't I never do'_ and _'Guess tonight's a locker room sleepover'_ and _'Oh my god shut up'_ – the last one to his stupid chanting cat. Through it all, he keeps walking down the street and around the block, heading back towards the school, like everything is perfectly normal. Except it isn't.

Except he _did_ forget one thing: his scent. And that's what they find, the lingering smell of someone in the corner of the living room – the smell of sleep, the stink of fear and anger and grief; and under it all, ozone.

_Magic magic magic._

_Witch witch witch._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thank you for reading! This is going to be a long ass ride, and I hope you will stick around till the end!  
Come talk to me at belladonna-queen.tumblr.com


	2. cat and wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please go check ClockworkDragon's art on [tumblr](https://c-dragon-art.tumblr.com/post/187806947301/im-so-excited-to-finally-share-this-here-is-my)!!!

Back in their house in Wales, there was a cat that lived in their cellar and ate from Abram’s hand when offered – an ugly thing, black and old and mangy, but pretty sweet. It’d taken a liking to him but refused to go near his mother. When she asked him what he’d like his familiar to be, he spent days studying its anatomy, drawing and trying to copy it as best as he could. He knew the tattoo would work on magic, not realism, but it felt important. As if the time he spent learning about the cat in the cellar would affect his relationship with the cat on his skin somehow.

If that’s the case, though, then Neil is sure he did something very wrong.

Most days they got along, the uneventful town of Millport giving no motives for the cat to be wary. Sometimes it would give him cryptic – mostly useless – messages like _‘Mouse little mouse little snack’_ or _‘No morning milk’_, and he’d only understand what the fuck it actually meant when he found his biscuit packs chewed on, or that the milk was spoiled. Rarely, it gave him actually useful information, warning him of a surprise English test, or of this or that teacher’s prying eyes.

He still holds some resentment after the whole California fiasco, but part of him knows it was his own fault for not listening. So when, two weeks after the house incident, his familiar tells him to _‘Be prepared’_, that part is the one to tell him to listen.

They find him in the diner during his lunch break.

The school year had ended the week before, so Neil spends most of his time in the bookstore. He’s been considering his options, dragging out his unavoidable departure, dismissing town after town based on the most ridiculous parameters like closeness to water sources and how big the forests around it are.

When he leaves for lunch, he takes a travelling guide to Pennsylvania from the store with him, reading it as he eats his burger. It’s such a mundane afternoon that he doesn’t even react when an older man seats across from him. Then, the man says, "I've been looking for a witch." And his lunch doesn’t taste all that good anymore. "Oh" he says when Neil drops the burger back on the plate "don't let me keep you from your food."

Neil looks from the stranger to his food, then back up. His cat offers quite an unhelpful _‘Told you’_ that he ignores. Then, it sing-songs _‘Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf’_ and suddenly the man in front of him becomes a little bit more of a threat. He is, Neil remembers, still waiting for an answer. With another mournful look at his fries, he pushes them away. "I'm done anyway. Why should I care?" And, to the cat, _‘What is his name?’_

The man watches him for another second, then pulls the fries to himself and starts eating. His cat asks him _‘Why shouldn’t you?’_, then decides to be useful for once and answers his silent question _‘Wymack, David Wymack’_. Neil’s frown deepens. He’s heard of Wymack’s clan, in passing. They’re a story told to scare puppies into submission. _‘If you don’t behave yourself, we’ll send you to Wymack’s clan, with no alpha and no home.’_

He has no idea how this man heard of _him_, though.

_‘Safe?’_ He asks, and almost misses the answer when the man starts talking again.

"You're the witch that came into town a while ago, right? I heard about you. Untethered, unbound. I don't know how you survived this far, but I can offer you a safe place. A pack."

_‘Safe’_, it says.

A small, pathetic part of him cries a bit at the prospect of a pack. The last year has been hell, after his mother died. Everything was frayed edges and shaking hands late at night, the world tipping one degree to the left and making everything look wrong for days at a time. He knows he’s falling, knows what’s waiting for him at the end of it, and yet. And _yet_. He curls his hands into fists under the table.

"I have no interest in your pack, David Wymack.” He hisses. “I will not let you bind me. Now, if that’s all, leave." As far as he’s concerned, the Wymack pack is a pretty pathetic bunch, famous for not having an alpha and being basically a mess of unbound wolves, and no matter how pathetic he himself is feeling right now, he has no intention of binding himself.

_‘Safe’_, his cat whispers again then _‘pack pack pack’_. And he hates his mother, hates her perfect, well-woven magic, hates himself for the familiar he chose. Damn cat.

Wymack gives him a calm, considering look, then sighs as if giving up. He shifts in his seat, making Neil believe he’s leaving, but then he just. _Tilts_ his head to the side, baring his throat. Blinks slowly, twice. The whole thing is quite deliberate, and they both know exactly what it means. Neil’s focus zeroes on the seemingly easy show of weakness. Wymack’s eyes are calm as he stares him down, so ridiculously sure of his offer and his conclusion about Neil’s character.

Except Neil Josten is a mask he doesn’t mind dropping, and all wolves are dirty liars with pretty promises – his mother taught him this. So his second refusal is less Josten's fake-politeness and more Abram's bitter fury, and it shows. "Fuck off."

Wymack hesitates for a moment, but gets up and out of sight relatively fast after under Neil’s silent glare. Neil pays for his untouched lunch and goes back to work. The cat is silent for the rest of the day, to the point of making him uncomfortable. When he finally asks what the problem is, it’s in his chest and staring at him in the bathroom mirror of a new house, its fur all puffed out, the tail swishing up and down. _‘Pack’ _it whispers, then walks to his back and out of sight, clearly sulking. Neil rolls his eyes and puts the shirt back on, relieved it's nothing important.

And that, he thinks, is the end of it.

Except the next day Wymack comes again, cornering Neil during his shift in the bookstore, with a _bet you thought you'd seen the best of me_ look that makes him want to punch the wolf on the face. He's working, though, and his asshole of a boss is in the office, and the cat had told Neil early on he was fond of eavesdropping, so he puts on his worst customer smile and says "Hello and welcome to Alice's Wonders, can I help you?"

"Yes, actually," Wymack says. "I'm looking for a book, but I can't remember the name... It's about a kid, kinda stupid, won't listen to reason _at all_-"

He answers without even thinking, deep into work-mode. "There are a lot of books with independent children. Harry Potter, for one. The Chronicles of Narnia, the Percy Jackson series, the Illuminae-"

"Nope, not what I wanted. Something more adult-oriented, maybe? With a bad ending. Like Carrie from Stephen King but worse."

"Well, we have a terror and suspense section over there, if you’d like to see it." He says, pointing at the general direction of the far right corner, not really waiting for Wymack’s answer before walking around the counter towards it. The moment they are both out of his boss's sight, Neil touches his chest and activates one of the protection circles to make sure they won't be heard. Then he crosses his arms and glares at him. "I thought we came to an understanding yesterday."

Wymack reaches out and touches the edges of the spell, looking very interested. The bubble, that Neil thought was invisible to other people, wavers but holds. It earns him a satisfied nod, despite Neil’s hissed _“Don’t touch it.”_

"You told me to leave and I left." Wymack answers. At Neil's disbelieving expression, he adds, "If you tell me to leave right now, I'll do it, but I'll come back later anyway, so why bother?" There's a hint of amusement in his voice, and Neil might've even appreciated it if he wasn't the punchline.

"And if I tell you to leave me alone?"

"No can do, kiddo."

"It's— Neil." He speaks without thinking, then frowns at his own stupidity, _then_ does his best to cover it which, in truth, isn't all that good. "Fuck off. I'll meet you after my shift. That's all I can promise." By the man's huge grin, it's more than enough. _If mom was here_, he thinks, _she'd punch me to hell and back for this._

_‘If mom was here’_, the cat counters, _‘we’d be long gone by now.’_

.

It turns out his cat has been withholding information. _Again_.

He meets David Wymack at the diner after his shift, waves at the staff on his way to the corner booth, dropping into the seat across from the man. He’s been eating here for months and they all know his order by now.

"How did you find me?" Neil asks, mostly because he wants to stay in control of the conversation for as long as possible, but also because there's just no way Wymack could've heard about him without other, more dangerous, people hearing too. Except he's also pretty sure his father would've killed him by now, if he knew where he is.

Wymack seems quite satisfied that they're past the glaring and hissing – even if they really aren't. The waitress shows up with burgers for both of them, then vanishes back into the kitchen after sending Wymack an appreciative look. "As I said, we've been looking for a witch. One of your teachers seems to believe you would fit, so he called me."

"One of my— _which_ one of my teachers knows I'm a witch?" ‘_What the fuck’_, he adds mentally, directed at his familiar – who remains suspiciously silent. ‘_Which one of them?’_ He adds for good measure.

_‘... Hernandez_.’ The cat admits finally, and then, as the little shit it is, adds ‘_You never asked.’_

_‘I asked if he was a danger.’_

_‘He's safe.’_ It says, not even a little bit apologetic.

Wymack shrugs, then starts eating his fries. Neil resumes his glaring, but refrains from hissing. The waitress comes back with Neil’s strawberry smoothie, no sugar, and this time Wymack catches the look she sends him. He just snorts. "Anyway, I assume you've heard about my pack?"

"No," Neil answers, just to be contrary. If that surprises the wolf, he doesn't show.

"Well, I call it my pack but I'm not an alpha, so it's not really mine." _Yeah_, Neil thinks, _I gathered that from the lack of posturing_. "We adopt strays until they find permanent packs. We're in nine now, small group."

"And why the sudden search for a witch then?"

Wymack goes on as if he hadn't heard him. "There's a college near the territory but you could always take online courses, and of course we'd be willing to pay for your tuition. I work as a coach and professor there, and we've got a nurse as well, but the others are all around your age." He finally stops, glancing at Neil's unimpressed face, then sighs. "Ok, we just got ourselves two new members. They are... complicated. And we're worried. That's where _you_ come in. Lucky us, I already saw your barriers. No need for auditions." The last part being drenched in sarcasm.

Neil hesitates only for a second before asking. "What kind of complicated are we talking about?"

"... We've got an alpha with no pack, no territory and no idea how to form one."

Neil's eyebrows shoot up. Well, it does sound rather complicated. He has no idea what to think of it – and no idea how _he_ could help with that. “And the other one?"

Wymack grimaces. "Well... Actually... We don't know. He's... He's turned. Didn't transform yet. We're worried about how he'll take it."

That's just crazy. "I've _never_ been in a pack before. I have no experience. You do realize what you're asking from me, right?"

"Yes, but you are also our only option. Calling an already bound witch might just mess things up further."

Neil takes in a big breath, then lets it go, dropping his shoulders. That sounds like a huge problem, and he really doesn’t need any new problems right now. He thinks _"Shit." _And doesn't realize that he'd spoken it out loud as well until Wymack answers.

"Indeed." They sit there in silence for a long time and Wymack lets him think, thank god, before asking “Well? Will you come? I can get you a ticket for tomorrow.”

“I can’t answer now,” Neil says.

“How about your parents?” Wymack asks, although Neil’s pretty sure he knows more than he lets on. Werewolves have a great sense of smell, and Neil knows his clothes smell like him and him alone. Not even cat fur, since his familiar’s corporeal form smells like grass and dirt. And, of course, Hernandez must’ve talked.

So, he shrugs and says, “They’re neither witches nor pack, if that’s what you want to know.” And feels a pang of gratitude when Wymack doesn’t press for more.

They finish their meals, and Neil doesn’t complain when Wymack pays for both because a free meal is a free meal. When the guy looks like he’s going to follow Neil home, though, he draws the line.

“I need _time_.”

“We don’t have time, kid. Can’t go back empty-handed again, either.” Clearly Wymack isn’t above some begging, puppy eyes and all – not that it works: he’s ridiculously big and looks like a thug.

“One night, then.”

Wymack hesitates but nods before leaving. The moment he turns the corner, Neil begins planning how to escape. His scent could be covered with magic, but disappearing now would call too much attention. Also, Coach Hernandez apparently knows about him, and there’s just no way to solve _that_ without killing him. Neil likes the coach – he’s pretty sure the guy _let_ him sleep in the locker room without telling anyone about it for the whole year. It’d be a mess, and then he’d _still_ have to deal with Wymack.

It doesn’t surprise him that his cat refuses to help him plan his escape. Instead, the annoying thing waits the whole night for him to stew in his own anxiety before telling him _‘Pack is safe is warm is family._’

And there’s no denying he _wants_ to go. A pack. It sounds like a pipedream. He tries the word on his mouth, over and over, until it tastes like ashes.

.

Less than a month later, he takes a plane across the country to South Carolina.

He hates flying more than anything – apparently his magic does _something_ to almost every piece of technology he encounters, so he’s always afraid he’ll get in trouble for it, and despite not being afraid of the concept of flying, he _is_ quite afraid of falling to his death after causing a system breakdown mid-flight because of his father’s stupid lightning magic. Unfortunately, riding a bus or stealing a car to drive cross-country is out of the question. Wymack had insisted on haste and, after agreeing to go, Neil could hardly refuse him.

During the flight he tries to read the traveling guide to South Carolina he’d bought back at Millport, but the cat keeps murmuring nonsensically in the back of his mind – and even singing some random pop song when one of the flight attendants offers him snacks – making it impossible for him to focus.

After his plane lands with no difficulty, he waits for the crowd of tired passengers to leave before doing the same. Wymack had promised him a ride from the airport, but didn’t really specify who would come get him. He only knows one of the pack members by name, and refused Wymack’s suggestion of getting a phone, so he’s relying on luck and maybe his cat’s willingness to find his assigned driver.

While Neil maneuvers his way through the mass of people, the cat stops murmuring and starts assessing the crowd for danger, making it easier for him. He feels better knowing someone’s watching his back. It warns him about a pickpocket once, but nothing worse happens. When they finally make it to Arrivals, walking becomes easier and his heart finally calms down. The cat chooses this moment to call out _‘Watch your nine’_, bringing Neil to attention immediately.

A small blond guy wearing black from head to toe is staring at him a little ways away from the rest of the crowd, holding a plaque that reads _“Abracadabra”_, and when he sees it, his familiar lets out a noise that can only be classified as laughter. Neil rolls his eyes but makes his way over.

_‘Goth puppy is safe’_ it tells him, still laughing. _‘For now, at least.’_

“It’s Neil, actually.” He says in lieu of hello.

The guy stares, face blank, and after a moment only points and asks “Baggage claim?”

He shakes his head. “Just this.” After eyeing him for another moment, the temporarily dubbed Goth Wolf turns around and leaves, trusting Neil to follow. _‘Rude’_ the cat murmurs, but when Neil asks what his name is, it pretends not to listen.

When they cross the street towards the airport garage, Goth Wolf is almost run over by a car but shows no reaction besides pulling a cigarette pack from his pocket. It reminds Neil of Wymack’s words, makes him wonder if _this_ is the Alpha who’s never been taught what it means to rule, all raw power and reckless behavior – the posturing is pretty characteristic. They finally stop by a sleek black car that can only be described as expensive and, still in silence, the man opens the trunk before getting inside. After putting his duffle in the back, Neil follows.

“So,” Goth Wolf begins, after starting the car and driving towards the exit, “you’re the wizard.”

“Witch,” Neil corrects.

“Wymack told us you were excited to meet us” he goes on, apparently deaf to both Neil and the amount of honks and curses he’s getting from other drivers. “He refused to give us details, but I find it hard to believe anyone would want to be part of his pack.”

“And yet here you are.” He answers, with no shortage of sarcasm.

Goth Wolf snorts, but lets it go. They’re already halfway to the city when he speaks again.

“How desperate are you for a pack anyway?”

“Enough to choose you, it seems,” Neil says, mostly because agreeing with someone is the easiest way to make them drop the topic. This time, it doesn’t work.

“What did Wymack offer you? Did you make a deal? Are you bound?”

“That…is not how it works. I agreed to come. I did not agree to stay. I certainly did not bind myself. I’m not stupid.” There’s a peaceful lull in the conversation, then Goth Wolf breaks it again.

"What kind of magic can you do?" He asks it in such an uninterested way that Neil knows this is some kind of test.

"Wymack told me you'd need my help for protection spells. I'm good at those." Goth Wolf takes his eyes from the road for a moment to look at him.

"What _kind_ of protection spells?"

The cat whispers _'the kind that quietens the world.'_ And it sounds like a promise not made for him. "...I’m assuming silencing wards? As I said, Wymack didn't get into details." Neil tries for nonchalance, but he’s pretty sure he fails. It’s quiet for a full five minutes before curiosity gets the better of him. “He said you have a turned wolf.”

Goth Wolf’s hands tighten on the wheel. “Did he, now.”

“You know the person, then. How bad is it?”

“What” his voice is cold as steel “would you call bad, exactly?”

“I—” he hesitates. _‘Careful, careful’_ the cat whispers.

_‘Give me some real advice for once.’_

_‘Do not lie to a wolf.’_

“I think it depends on how they’re dealing with it… The first transformation is the hardest, even for born wolves. If your turned wolf didn’t experience it yet, Wymack might have called me to help.”

“Tell me something new, Harry Potter.”

“…My name is Neil.”

“You already said that.”

Neil frowns. “I guess—to keep them safe, to keep the _pack_ safe—Wymack might ask me to control the situation.” But that’s a _big_ guess. There’s no way the turned wolf hasn’t transformed yet, it’s been almost a _month_ since Wymack found him.

“And that means?”

“Restriction wards.” There’s a low rumble from the wolf at that. Figures, he’s never met a wolf who likes being restricted. His mom didn’t enjoy it, either. “Look, it sounds worse than it is.”

“Oh? And how can being _locked_ sound better?”

“It’s not—I’d never—I don’t even _know_ how to make prison wards. The wards I know need permission. One to keep in. One to keep out.” He’s repeating his mother’s words—how she explained to him what he’d have to do. It makes him feel a bit sick.

_(“It’s for your own safety, Abram,” she’d say, nails digging into his arms.)_ He chases the memory away with a shudder.

“So the wolf would have to agree? Sounds like bullshit.”

Neil agrees, but his mother never took prisoners. The only spells he knew with similar intent were the cages she designed from scratch to control her outbursts, and _those_ required consent. She’d tell him when it got bad, and he’d ask her when he put them up, and she’d say _yes_. The most important part was the yes. _‘That will please him’_ the cat says, but there’s no way Neil would give that much to an unknown wolf.

“I don’t know how to explain, but that’s how it works to me. It’s give and take. Like— like a transaction.”

“You said you could keep ill-intenders out.”

“That’s different—” _‘except when it’s not’_ the thought stops him short. “To keep unwanted people out, the people I’m keeping _in_ have to want that too. It’s like… a coin?”

“And what’s on the other side?”

Neil is a little surprised he caught on to the metaphor. “If I keep one person in, either everyone around has to want it very much or the person itself agrees to it. Otherwise, it’s a battle of wills, and whoever is stronger wins. With a single witch, it’s a losing battle from the start.”

Goth wolf tips his head a little and chews on it for the rest of the ride in silence.

.

They go straight to Palmetto, where the pack studies and works. His first impression of the campus is _orange_. The flowers are orange, the oldest buildings are dark orange, everything is orange. There are orange and white banners welcoming old and new students, and they are bright enough to hurt. Then Andrew makes a turn and the stadium comes into view and _honestly_, who the _fuck_ thought orange was a good color for a college? “Wymack works there,” is all Goth Wolf offers before following the traffic towards the stadium.

The color doesn’t get easier to look at when they finally park, but there's no time to stare incredulously at the stadium because there's a welcome committee at the gates, which Goth Wolf joins at some point between Neil getting out of the car and grabbing his bag from the trunk.

Neil kind of wants to stall this, he feels anything but ready to meet a bunch of werewolves, but his mother is whispering in the back of his head _"they'll eat you alive if they find an opportunity"_ and he’s pretty sure if he stops to think about it he’ll run away, so after slamming the trunk closed, Neil walks towards the pack hoping he doesn't look as terrified as he feels. They watch him approach and Neil watches them back, counting seven of them – he’s unsure if the others are late or chose not to come.

The wolves who came are all his age, and Neil quickly divides them in two groups: one for those who look either bored or cautious – two of the guys, Goth Wolf included, and one of the girls – and those who look curious or receptive – the rest of them, although he's unsure if the girl with white hair who's smiling at him is trying for sweet or threatening. Wymack is the first to step forward and everyone's attention snaps to him before flitting back towards Neil, almost in sync. It’s kind of creepy. "I wasn't sure you'd come." He offers as a hello, but there's a question in his eyes.

"I'm not crazy enough to refuse a pack," Neil answers, and ignores the murmured _‘Yet’_ that comes from the group. "And it's not like I had a better choice."

That seems to satisfy Wymack, who nods at him before turning to his pack. "Everyone, this is Neil. He's our new witch. Do try not to bite, it's rude." A tall boy in the back of the group sniggers, then curls into himself a little when no one else follows. "Neil, this is the pack." Then he points and introduces them one by one. There’s Dan, who is right beside Wymack and gives him a polite nod; Allison, who smiles big and feral; Matt, who is the tall boy and smiles a little and waves from behind the two girls; Seth, who only glares; Renee, whose smile grows and only makes her look more threatening; and finally Goth Wolf or, as Wymack introduces him, "and this is Andrew, who promised he wouldn't traumatize you during the ride. Did he?"

The question takes him by surprise. "I—no. We just chatted."

By the disbelieving looks he gets, Andrew doesn't usually "chat". He's also the only one apart from the group, close only to Renee but still not touching. Weird. He's pretty sure wolves like physical contact. _Constant_ physical contact, if his mother is to be believed. Even weirder, none of the others seem to mind the distance.

"Right." Wymack drags the word, sending a look towards Andrew before continuing "Abby is still at work, so you'll meet her later. Kevin is— where the fuck is he?"

The question is directed at Andrew, who shrugs before answering. "Not in my pocket."

“He’s playing by himself,” Dan answers. “Getting rid of the excess energy.”

As if summoned, the door from the Court behind the group clicks and opens. Neil’s cat hisses a _‘Be ready’_, but no warning would prepare him for the sight of _Kevin fucking Day_ here at _Palmetto State_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I hope you enjoyed it, come find me on tumblr at belladonna-queen.tumblr.com :)


	3. promises and deals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, I just REALLY wanted to thank all of you??? Thank you so much for reading and the comments and the kudos and the love you're sending my way, I'm trying to answer them all as fast as I can!  
I hope you enjoy today's chapter! The next one will be up on Tuesday!

_(“You shouldn’t be here,” Neil says._

_Kevin presses a hand to his cheek, eyes shining orange, the pull of the moon strong with how high up the sky it is – he should be out with the pack, not keeping Neil company. He’s been doing it the whole week, but today is the full moon, so Neil assumed he’d be with the other wolves. Kevin just grins at him, somehow more daring than usual “You will be my witch one day. You are more important.”)_

His heart stops, trips and comes back racing. He thinks _‘this can’t be happening.’_ Thinks _‘why is he here, why is he here, why is he—’_ he takes a step back but his body locks in panic before he can go any further — he _knows_ they’ll notice something’s wrong —_‘mother was right—is this a ruse is this how father will get— no no no—’_ he suddenly notices the cat half-shouting_ ‘safe safe safe’_. It’d know. He’d be warned. Right.

Damage control.

Neil breathes in deep and casts as he exhales—a spell to hold his smell from the wolves. Some of them are already staring—he curls his hands to stop them from shaking and focuses on Wymack’s face as he mutters “I’m not sure I can do this.”

Kevin, who noticed something was wrong and stopped by the security gate, bristles and scowls when Neil’s words reach him.

Wymack frowns, but steps towards Neil instead of away. “Is there anything wrong?”

“I— no, I just—” He presses his lips together, trying for uncomfortable and out of depth instead of _‘I just saw a ghost and want to run away as fast as possible’_. “I made a mistake. I _really_ can’t do this.”

“Is this your first time meeting an Alpha?” Renee asks, her voice quiet and understanding, but when Neil looks at her he _sees_ how she’s analyzing him. _She’s dangerous_. No matter what the cat says, she’s _dangerous_. He stops a flinch, takes another deep breath, shakes his head.

“No. _No_, but—” He shuts up. All their postures change: even Andrew looks less murderous. They all share a look and he knows they’re assuming things – making up stories, filling the gigantic blanks he’s leaving. He shrugs, curls into himself. “I have to go.”

“No, you don’t.” The unfamiliar voice is so startling he jumps a bit. Kevin came closer, while he was looking down. He’s half-behind Wymack and staring straight at Neil, who does flinch this time.

Dan, noticing the motion, growls out warningly “Kevin.”

He ignores her. “I’m not like his previous Alpha. He can’t give up on the pack because of his sob story background.” To Neil, he says “You _will_ stay.”

“_Kevin._” She growls again, and Neil _shudders_. He shoots a look at the rest of the pack – they’re all watching him. Damn. He sends a look at Wymack, mentally asking him to please be reasonable and let him leave. It clearly doesn’t compute.

“Shut up, Kevin.” The old man orders. “You need a moment, kid?”

“I _need_ to _go_.”

“No, you don’t,” Wymack says, in a weirdly gentle voice. “Kevin isn’t why you’re here. You don’t have to interact with him at all.”

“I’m the _Alpha_-”

“If he bothers you, I’ll just kick his ass.” He goes on, ignoring the interruption.

_How can they do that_, Neil wonders, _how can they interrupt him, defy him_? An Alpha’s word is law, this shouldn’t be possible. Except when he looks, Andrew is by Kevin’s side, holding him by his elbow, and it takes all the fight out of him. Kevin _lets_ them shut him up and hold him back. “I knew your pack was weird,” he says without thinking, “but that is just crazy. How do you do that?”

They relax a bit at that. Matt laughs a bit, Dan gives him a smile. “Annoying Kevin is a shared hobby,” Allison offers, in lieu of an explanation, making Seth laugh.

“He’s not really our Alpha. He’s just an Alpha that lives with us.” Matt adds a bit more helpfully.

“Maybe being away from Alphas for so long made us immune,” Dan suggests.

“Anyway,” Wymack cuts in, “talking with Kevin is up to you. I can’t let you go, though. The full moon is close and I need you here.”

The whole pack snaps to attention at that. They all look from Neil to Wymack, then to Andrew, then back at Neil – their synchronicity _still_ very unnerving. Even Kevin seems surprised by what Wymack implies. “Is that why you brought a witch in? What makes you think Andrew would let him—” then he cuts himself out because Andrew is clearly squeezing his arm.

So _goth wolf_ is also the _turned wolf_. Curious. It means Wymack either _made_ Andrew go get him as a test or he _let_ him go to give them a chance to talk before Neil met the others.

For a moment, Neil considers just running away. He could easily unlock Andrew’s car and leave. His feet stay planted in the ground, though, and the cat whispers _‘This is our chance to make that promise truth.’_

_(“When we’re older,” a young wolf had told him once, “I can be your alpha, and you can be my witch.”)_

Kevin is staring at him, and he’s standing both too close and miles away. They’d been children. It’d meant nothing. It should’ve meant nothing. Neil can’t lie to himself and say Kevin telling him to stay means nothing, though. They aren’t children anymore, but.

He’s pretty sure Kevin would’ve recognized him by now. And even though his smell isn’t concealed, Neil is still under three glamour spells, and it’s been _ten years_. There’s no way his childhood friend will recognize him after all this time. He’s pretty sure he won’t actually have the choice of ignoring the alpha, but the truth is that no matter how much Neil wants to run away, he still needs their help. Kevin or no Kevin, he doesn’t want to go mad.

After another long second, he looks away from Kevin and towards Andrew. His stay, Neil realizes, depends solely on Andrew now, and he can only hope his answers earlier were satisfactory.

Andrew takes his sweet time answering Wymack’s silent question; he stares at Neil as if trying to read his mind and keeps his grip tight on the alpha’s arm. “Harry Potter over there can stay, but I don’t want him near Kevin.”

The only one who looks ready to protest that is Kevin, but none of the others pay attention to him when he starts complaining, and as soon as Wymack gives the okay, Andrew drags the alpha away by his arm, and Dan and Matt approach Neil and offer to show him around campus. He accepts, of course, because he needs to get away from Kevin before his brain has a meltdown, and from all the wolves Dan and Matt seem to be the safest. They take Matt's red truck and drive around, pointing at buildings that are important and telling stories about their previous year in college. At some point, they pass through the suburbs where most teachers and some of the staff live, and Dan points out Abby Winfield's house, explaining "She's taking care of another wolf right now – not from the pack, but it seems she'll stick around for college."

"So there's another pack member I don't know."

"Oh no! Katelyn's pack is from Summerton, she runs there whenever she can. Abby volunteered to keep an eye on her just in case, you know." Neil grows even more nervous at the idea of another pack hearing about him – an unknown witch suddenly showing up at a pack is bound to gather attention. He's so busy panicking he almost doesn't notice the worried glance Matt throws him through the rearview mirror— right. Damned sense of smell. Damned wolves. He opens the window on his side and tries to think of something to say.

Dan beats him to it. "So, about Kevin." His blood turns into ice. "He'll definitely try to talk to you. I give him half a week tops."

Matt snorts. "We all live together. I bet twenty he'll get to Neil here tonight."

"Thanks for the twenty bucks, then. You forget he'll have to convince Andrew to let him through first." Dan grins at her packmate, poking him in the ribs to see him squirm. The next time they stop on a red light he bats her away and they turn their attention back to Neil.

"Speaking of Andrew," Dan says, "I'm sorry he was your first impression of us. I know the pack has a bad reputation, but most of us are nice and decent people."

"Renee is a sweetheart," Matt adds when Dan doesn't, "and Allison is, well, she isn't nice, but she's a good packmate. Abby is also a very good person, and even Coach is kinda nice when you get to know him.

"I mean, I guess there's Seth. He's an asshole. But the rest of us are nice."

"How long have you been with Wymack now?" Neil asks.

"Almost four years," Matt answers. "Dan's been here a bit longer."

"Next year will be my last in college. Seth is the oldest, believe it or not. He's been with Wymack almost six years now."

"He's still in college? How is he paying that?" The moment he finishes his question Dan's phone rings, but she ignores in favor of sending a look to Matt, who mirrors it.

"Well," Dan hesitates, then shrugs and continues, "his previous pack paid for the first year. Then he gave up on everything and just—left. Took a whole year off. Ran all around the country jumping from pack to pack. He came back a bit weird, I guess, and his pack's alpha didn't want him back, so Wymack took him in full time." 

"He did that alone?" The question comes out sharper than he intended it to. "I mean, how did he do it?"

It's Matt who answers him since Dan is distracted by her phone.

"No one knows. He doesn't talk about it, not even with Allison. I'm pretty sure he's going to therapy regularly, though."

"He did talk to Abby a lot when he came back" Matt adds, distractedly "but she wouldn't tell us even if we asked. Because of the patient confidentiality thing."

Dan hums her agreement and her phone rings again. This time, she picks up. Even without listening to the other side of the conversation, Neil knows it's got something to do with him. He kinda hopes it's not urgent because the flight is catching up to him and he's getting tired. Unfortunately, a few seconds into the phone call Dan says, "I dunno, lemme ask him," and turns to say "are you up for some food? Abby's cooking and she invited you."

He sighs internally, but nods. "Sure. I'd like that."

"Oh, you will" Matt promises, turning the car around "Abby's tacos are great."

Abigail is a friendly, kind woman. She greets Neil with a gentle voice, makes him promise to call her Abby, then shouts for Matt and Dan to go help in the kitchen right after. He's surprised at how easy it is to sit down at a stranger's table and eat their food without worrying about being poisoned or something, but it's hard to worry with someone like Abby around. She's small and gentle and warm, her hands soft where she touches his cheek in greeting—the complete opposite of his mother. Besides, Matt keeps the conversation flowing, and Dan pipes in with explanations and stories for Neil's sake whenever he looks confused, and the tacos really are good.

By the time the food is gone, though, it's obvious the visit isn't just to introduce Abby and Neil. It takes him until after they wash the dishes and sit down on the living room to talk about classes or whatever to understand why Matt and Dan didn't leave earlier: there's no way he can go to the pack's house right now, not with Kevin there, and the looks Abby's been giving him the whole night mean he'll be invited to sleepover anytime now.

After he realizes it, the thought keeps nagging at him until he gives up and interrupts Matt mid-rant about his lit professor to say "You don't have to let me sleep over if you don't want to." Abby had been staring at him again, but this time he turns to stare back. They all startle at his voice – Neil kept to himself for most of the night – and Abby's eyes go big and round as she looks down at her lap. Neil frowns "I didn't mean to be rude. I just mean— if I make you uncomfortable you can just say it."

"Neil—" Dan starts, but he interrupts her.

"I know I'll have to talk to Andrew and Kevin before moving into the house, but that doesn't mean I should impose on Abby. We barely know each other, I can just go to a hotel or something."

"Of course not!" Abby speaks at last. "I can't let our witch sleep somewhere else alone, and I'm used to housing guests anyway. You don't have to worry about it." He hesitates then, realizing she’s right. And even if she weren’t, Abby’s a werewolf. She could cut him into ribbons before he even thought of hurting her. His mother used to say that he should never trust a wolf; they always want something from you, and they will eat you alive if they get a chance. His cat tells him Abby is safe and kind, but it means nothing if she changes her mind later. “More importantly” she adds when he doesn’t protest “do you mind sleeping here? We can always call David, he must have someplace where you can sleep.”

Matt makes a face. “Coach’s couch is shit, you’re better off here bro.”

“I— okay. I don’t mind.” And, realizing how rude it sounded, he adds “Thank you for your hospitality.”

Abby’s smile is big and sincere. “Of course, Neil. Anytime.”

Dan and Matt leave shortly after, promising to come and get Neil in the morning. “We’ll probably have a meeting at the house tomorrow. Dunno when, but Abby can tell you.”

The first thing Neil does after getting into the guest room is locking the door. Abby told him to feel free to put up any protections that would make him feel safe, so that’s the first thing he does. When he is done with the wards, he reaches into his chest and brings the cat out, ink turning fur until the cat is corporeal and in his arms; its long black fur shines unnaturally in the moonlight, and Neil just stops to pet it for a while. The cat purrs and rubs against him, then jumps to the floor and curls around itself by the door to keep watch. “If something changes, you warn me.” Neil reminds it, despite their years together, and the cat doesn’t even glance his way. It looks relaxed, comfortable, so Neil walks into the adjacent bathroom and takes his time in the shower, checking the spells on his hair and eyes when he comes out. He cleans his teeth, spends a good fifteen minutes deciding what clothes he'll sleep in, checks his wards thrice, and when there's no other excuse not to, he goes to sleep.

The nightmares are old news – blue eyes shining bright like lightning, a small child huddled in the corner crying, hands keeping him still as his skin _burns_, his mother ordering him to _keep quiet_, her eyes shining with unrestrained power, a wolf: pitch black, red eyes, watching him from the shadows, his father’s laugh echoing in a large empty room. They are all old memories and his mother always said he should stop reminiscing.

It doesn't stop him from being sick when he wakes up the next morning. He wastes an hour cleaning the floor, and another twenty minutes trying to get the stink of sickness off the room before he takes another shower and gets his things ready.

The cat jumps into his arms and walks around his skin before curling up to sleep on his shoulder, the colorful ink overlapping with the lightning scars, and Neil waits for him to settle before putting on a shirt and leaving the room.

Abby is still sleeping, and it's early enough that Neil decides to go explore the city instead of trying to cook something to eat without waking her up. The front door opens easily under his key spell, and he locks it before walking down the street towards the campus. He takes advantage of the early hour to explore as much as possible on his own. When that's over with he walks to the stadium where he'd met the pack, buying himself some food on the way.

_‘No one’s home’_ the cat tells him before he can even ask. Pity, Neil wanted to speak with Wymack without the others – ask for instructions, find out what he’s supposed to do now that both his Alpha and the turned wolf he’s supposed to help are off-limits. There’s no way he’s going to wait for him to arrive, though, so he just circles the stadium and walks into the field behind it, enjoying the feel of grass under his feet and reaching out to touch the bark of every tree he finds.

Getting to know the territory – and being known by it – is absolutely essential if he wishes for his wards to hold when he raises them, and walking around is one of the easiest ways to do it. Leaving a magical imprint might be kinda risky, but he’s hoping it’ll be worth it. One of the first things his mother taught him when they settled on their house in the UK, was about magic; how it chose people, how it spoke to them, how it permeated everything from the smallest of ants to the tallest of trees. How the land around them was a living, breathing thing. He learned to listen and understand the whispers of the wind, the promises of the earth, the murmurs of the water. He learned to understand them as they understood him.

Here, the trees and the grass are silent under his touch – still alive and still there, but quiet, like a sleeping beast. The lack of forests is unnerving after Millport, and Columbia is as grey and asphalted as they get. Even here, in the tall grass where no one wants to walk in, there's trash lying around. Neil picks up the cans and wrappings he finds, stacking them so he can come back later and clean it properly. He's so focused on doing it, he doesn't notice time passing. He does notice, however, when the sound of big paws approaching him from behind. Without thinking, he raises a shield around himself, and when he turns it's with half a mind to burn whoever it is.

When the wolf sees him, however, it stops on its tracks, breathing hard and noisy. They stare at each other for a long moment before it breaks eye contact to throw it's head back and howl. Neil thinks, for a chilling second, that this wolf might not be from Wymack's pack. Then it— _he_ stands up in a weird motion, changing into Kevin Day with the sounds of bones breaking and rearranging. Neil had forgotten how unnerving werewolf transformations were. It is, somehow, worse. Especially because Kevin is naked.

"What the fuck," Kevin Day says to him.

"What the fuck," Neil says back, with a completely different meaning. After a moment's consideration, he adds, "holy _shit_."

"Why can’t I smell you? Why are you here?" Kevin asks, ignoring Neil's words. He seems unbothered by his own nakedness. "Why did you leave without telling anyone? Were you trying to run?"

"Can you please put on some clothes?" Neil blurts out.

"Answer me," Kevin growls.

"I wasn't running away," he says automatically and puts down his shield so it doesn’t conceal his smell. Then he realizes Kevin’s speaking to him as if he owns him. "Don't talk to me like that. And put on some clothes." Kevin scowls at him and _turns _back, not that seeing him as a giant wolf makes Neil any more comfortable. Especially because teeth. And bones-breaking noises. Heavens, if he thinks too hard about it he can _see_ the transformation happening in slow motion.

This time, though, he doesn’t tense when the wolf approaches. Neil stays stock still and lets him reach out and bump his snout on Neil’s head. It’s jarring, even though he’d been expecting it. One moment he’s alone in his head, the other there’s a cacophony of voices and emotions – even weirder, they _feel it_ when he joins them – there’s a _shift _somewhere and suddenly he’s assaulted by _worry _and _anger _and _bring him here kevin bring him back bring him home witch little witch_.

Neil reaches out and brings the shield back up, silencing them, hands shaking with the strength of the bond. He didn’t expect the pack to be like this – with two new members and a new alpha, he was sure they’d be more scattered, but he was wrong. This isn't a bunch of betas hardly held together by sheer necessity, this is a _pack_, and it terrifies him.

Kevin approaches again, and this time his touch only shares his own thoughts and feelings – he's annoyed for being cut off, curious of how Neil does it, and he _wants_ Neil to come. His wishes don't feel like an order, but they don't feel like an offer either. It's like suddenly Neil wants to do what Kevin wants him to do, _and it's not even unreasonable, he'd go back by himself eventually he just didn't notice the time, and they should go back now, the others are waiting_— Neil jerks back and the thoughts stop. He's both pissed and fascinated, but the thought is still nagging at him and he can't tell how much is him and how much is Kevin as alpha so he pushes it aside to be analyzed later.

He agrees because there’s no reason not to, and lets Kevin lead the way back.

When they get closer to the road, Andrew comes into view, standing at the edge of the grass and staring hard at them. Neil had found it weird, seeing Kevin by himself, but it made sense that he'd run ahead as a wolf. Andrew somehow manages to look very pissed without moving a single facial muscle. "I told you to stay away from him." He says when they're close enough.

Neil tries and fails to control his annoyance. "I didn't force him to come here." He only notices Andrew wasn't talking to him because of the look he sends his way. Kevin makes a low rumbling noise and turns again. "We're literally ten steps away from the road, what the fuck."

Neither of the wolves acknowledge him. "I'm fine, he's safe, stop bitching."

"Oh? And what would you do if he wasn't safe? Piss on him?"

"Clothes. Put on some clothes and try not to talk about me when I'm _right here_."

"I can fight a witch by myself. I'm strong."

"If he were a mole he wouldn't be alone, would he?"

"Well, I'm not. A mole, that is. Please put on some clothes."

Both of them finally turn to him, and he remembers he's supposed to be quiet. Inconspicuous. _'_That_ ship's sailed'_ the cat tells him happily.

"Stay away from him," Andrew orders, throwing the bundle he'd been holding at Kevin and pointing at Neil.

"What's with you and clothes anyway?" Kevin complains but accepts the clothes Andrew throws at him. "I could just say this was a dare or whatever. It's college. No one cares."

It's a testament to Neil's bad choices in life that he can do nothing but snort, shrug and agree.

They walk to the stadium together – both wolves ahead, Neil a few paces behind them – in silence. Kevin keeps turning to check if he's still with them, and though Andrew doesn't do the same, Neil has the distinct feeling he's also watching to make sure he doesn't run.

When they arrive, all the others are already there. Kevin opens the outer gate and the doors to the locker room. Back in Millport, Neil played Exy just so he could use the showers. His school’s lockers were split between three different teams, as well as gym class students, but the Exy team here in Palmetto has a stadium all for themselves with a press room, two offices – one for Wymack and the other for Abby as the team’s coach and nurse – and a lounge, where they find the pack. Despite what he said earlier, Andrew doesn’t complain when Kevin stays by Neil’s side.

The moment he sees them Wymack begins a long speech on pack unity and communication which Neil stops paying attention to almost immediately. The others keep sending him looks – Matt looks hurt since he’d given Neil his number last night and asked him to call if something happened; Dan, Renee, and Abby seem neutral, probably waiting for his explanation, and Seth isn’t even there, but Allison looks furious. She doesn’t even wait for Wymack to stop talking; the moment it seems like he’s winding down, she pounces.

"Why did you leave?"

"I didn’t," Neil answers automatically.

"I mean the bond. I could hear you, and then I couldn’t. Why?"

That takes Neil by surprise. He didn’t notice his shield was still up, didn’t notice he was still blocking them out. Despite that, he doesn’t bring it down. ‘_Family means trust._’ The cat reminds him, but there’s no way Neil will trust these people after knowing them for a day. That’s not how it works. "I’m not sure if I’m ready for that." He says, honestly. "I understand it’s important to you, but I can’t have you in my head right now. I’m not a wolf and this is all kind of new to me."

Allison opens her mouth, probably to express how much she doesn’t like his answer but settles when Renee calls her. "We can give you time." She tells him when no one else does. "I know it can be hard, getting used to all of it. Some of us don’t understand what it’s like, being in a pack for the first time."

Something inside Neil stirs. _‘Some of us’_ she said; maybe that’s what unnerved him about Renee, that she’s more on the wild side than the rest. There’s no violet in her eyes to indicate she’s an Omega, though. "Thank you."

"That doesn’t explain what you were doing in the middle of an empty field though." Allison pipes in, arms crossed.

Neil can still feel grass and bark under his fingers, and it makes him more honest, the familiar touch of it. "I was greeting your territory. It’s easier if I’m around nature because asphalt isn’t exactly friendly. Or alive. There aren’t many trees though."

Kevin makes a noise under his breath. "It’s disgusting."

Before any of the others can tell Kevin to shut up, Wymack asks. "Is it easier with trees around?"

Neil shrugs. "Grass, too. Even plain earth is better. I need to get in touch with the area, get it used to me, for the wards to hold."

"You talk as if it’s alive," Andrew observes, surprising the others.

"It is. Most things are. Or— not alive, I guess, just— full. Of magic. But your territory is very quiet."

Kevin sounds like he’s tired of repeating himself when he says "It’s because of the lack of an alpha. There’s nothing to bind the pack together, nothing to bind it to the territory." Neil wants to point out the strength of the bond he'd felt earlier, the overwhelming feel of it, but he doesn’t want to bring it up again so he stays quiet.

"If we plant some trees or whatever, will it be easier?" Matt asks, curious.

"Not really. There are city-packs. This isn’t about nature in itself. It’s just easier to find the bonds when you can feel the territory under you." Neil shrugs. "It’ll take time. As I said, I was just introducing myself."

"So you’ll keep doing it?" Wymack asks and, when Neil nods, says “Take one of the others with you. Hugging trees will be good for them.” What he means is _‘I don’t trust you alone yet’_. Neil can’t blame him, but he won’t walk around with an escort. Wymack must notice his quiet refusal because he adds. "Then send a message- get a phone, use the bond, send a dove, magic mail, I don’t care. Warn us. If something happens we need to know where you are so we can help."

That gives him a pause as well. He thinks of Andrew earlier, accusing him of being a mole. "Why" Neil begins slowly, cautiously, "do you think something would happen to me?"

All of the wolves go tense. Beside him, Kevin looks uncomfortable. He wonders if they think he’s a mole too. Probably not, or they wouldn’t have called him here. The question was directed at Wymack, but it’s Kevin who answers "Because there are people who didn’t want me to be here, and they aren’t afraid of using violence to get me back."

"People. You mean your previous pack."

"The Moriyamas," Andrew answers his silent question. Neil gasps then does his best to control himself. They are watching his reaction, he knows, and Andrew especially will use this against him if he can.

"The alpha of all wolves is after you?" Neil asks. His hands are shaking, he realizes, but if he clenches them into fists it might bring attention to them. If the Moriyama’s alpha wants Kevin he can’t be here. If he sends his father after Kevin— he can’t be caught up on this, he can’t—

"No! Not _him_, no!"

"What other Moriyama is there?" Neil hisses, but his cat answers before Kevin can, and Neil’s mouth gets ahead of his brain, echoing its words. "The younger son. The one who was thrown away. Riko." Kevin’s flinch is an answer by itself. Neil wants more, he wants to know why he wants to know what the Moriyama’s second son did to make him run, he wants to know if his father might still come, but all he can ask without giving himself away is "Will the alpha get involved?"

It’s obvious how much Kevin struggles to come up with an answer, but none of the others intervene. After a long moment, he answers with. "I don’t think so." Neil gets the very stupid urge to punch him in the face. It must show because he’s quick to talk again. "The Moriyamas are split. There’s the main pack that stays in New York with the Alpha of All—" when he says it, Neil notices, it sounds very different than when Neil does, like it has a different meaning coming from a wolf "—and the rest of them stay in their territory in West Virginia to guard it. The M- Tetsuji, the previous alpha’s brother, is responsible for it."

"And Riko?"

"He’s a beta," Kevin says like it answers everything. Maybe it does. Being the second son doesn’t mean much for a wolf, but being the second son after the next alpha is already born probably means Riko didn’t get much attention from his parents. If he felt any resentment towards his brother and found out Kevin was also an alpha…

"He wants your birthright. He tried to kill you for it." Neil says. He’s surprised with how quiet the room is. The others are all staring at him, but this right here is a turning point. He can’t falter now. "Will he come for you?"

"Yes."

Somewhere inside him, his mother screams for him to run _now_. He ignores her.

"Do you—" he shakes his head "what do you want me to do? The territory won’t help you as it is. My wards can’t cover all of it. A single witch can only do so much."

"I need you" and here his voice _changes _like it did before. It sounds less like Kevin and more like an Alpha, power incarnate, "to help me make it listen to me. I need you to make it acknowledge me as its alpha. I need a territory and I need it now."

"You won’t have it," Neil says, and Kevin growls as if his answer is an offense. "Not if you keep acting like it’s a thing, and not if you don’t take your time getting to know it. Magic isn’t a puppy, it won’t submit just because you growled at it. If this is your home, then it should _feel _like it."

"We don’t have the _time-_"

"Then you should’ve started earlier." It comes out sharper than he intended. He surprises both Kevin and himself with it. "I’m sorry. That came out wrong. What I mean is that there’s no other way I know of. I can give you some time, but that’s all."

Kevin stares at him, eyes flashing red and back to his normal brown, but after a moment, he nods, accepting his words. “We’re done,” he tells the pack.

Wymack just sends Neil a look that promises murder if he does anything like today ever again, and leaves with both Kevin and Andrew in tow. Before leaving, Andrew stops right in front of Neil and says "We’ll talk again soon." Somehow, he manages to make it sound like a threat. 

Abby gives him a ride to the house, but instead of getting out of the car when they get there, she brings down the passenger side window and calls Neil over. "I still have some work to do after this." She explains, sounding apologetic. "If you want, you can order something,"

"It’s fine-" Neil tries, but she keeps going.

"I left some money on the kitchen counter, and here" she takes something from her pocket, pushes it into his hand before he can protest again.

It’s a key, probably for the door behind him. He stares at it for a long moment before trying to give it back. Unfortunately, without her stretching towards him, he can’t really reach her.

"Thanks, but I don’t need it." Neil tries, then realizes how stupid he must sound to her, rejecting the keys to the house he’s technically locked out of. After a moment, unwilling to tell her about the key tattoo, he curls his fingers around it and gives up trying to explain.

Abby’s smile is victorious. "See you later, Neil."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, feel free to come and talk to me at belladonna-queen.tumblr.com !!!


	4. The Elder Mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank all of you for the love. Consider yourselves hugged or, if you don't appreciate physical contact, just let me say thank you another thousand times!  
The next chapter will be up on Friday. I hope you like this chapter, it's one of my favorites!!

It’s the day after the new moon, and he has fourteen days to decide what he’ll do. He can’t help but think of this as a countdown. Fourteen days until the full moon. Fourteen days to convince them he can do this. Fourteen days to convince _Andrew _he can do this.

The next day, he wakes up early, but by the time he's ready for his morning run, Abby either is still asleep or has already left for work. He leaves the cat in the room with his duffle under five layers of misdirection and invisibility wards, and locks the door behind himself with magic, instead of taking the spare key Abby gave him.

He's ready for a quiet morning run, wants to use this time to plan his strategy and decide how to deal with Andrew, but Seth’s waiting for him at the end of the street. He slows his pace down, waves a little to acknowledge the wolf, and when Seth just ignores him, keeps going. A second later, Seth is running beside him. It feels like an escort – Seth grumbles from time to time, complaining about the early hour and the shitty weather, but he doesn’t actually talk to Neil, so he just ignores the situation and finishes his run. It pisses him off, but he can't say it's unjustified after he vanished for hours the day before.

Except the next day, he goes the other way and finds Matt waiting for him instead. This time the run is far from quiet, and it kind of makes him wish he went towards Seth.

The most shocking thing is: talking to Matt is easy. He chats about anything and everything from movies to sports to books, and the questions he asks are safe enough – Neil's favorites and what he thought of this or that movie he's never watched before. It seems pretty minor until all the wolves – minus Kevin and Andrew – show up at Abby and drag Neil into a six-hour-long movie session with all the "classic" movies he shouldn't be allowed to die without watching.

The next day, Dan runs with him and it happens again. The next day it's Allison, then lunch together, then movies. And the one after that it's Renee, and they watch old cartoons together. Allison and Seth try to educate him on good music but give up quickly after he tells them anything that’s on the radio is fine. Dan watches a grand total of two episodes of House with him before he gives up and goes to bed. 

Wymack mentions casually he worked on a bookstore and they try talking about that instead, only to find out the only books Neil’s ever read were the ones school _made _him read. “I mean… _To Kill a Mockingbird _is good?”

Even Andrew looks disgusted at him after hearing about it.

The only place they don’t bother him is in his room, so when he wakes up Saturday morning with a headache and seriously considering either death or murder, he keeps his wards up and stays inside.

Abby, who he _knows _is the one warning the others of where he is and when he leaves, probably uses her powers for good and tells them to leave him alone, because there aren't even any knocks on his door. When it realizes he won’t leave the bed anytime soon, the cat jumps on beside him and curls into a ball to sleep. He stays like that for a long time, hands buried into fur to feel the cat purring. By lunchtime, though, Neil’s twitchy with the need to do _something _, and the cat is pacing around the room, in sync with it's master’s restlessness.

This time, as he makes his way towards the open fields, he makes sure to leave a scent trail behind. He spends the rest of the day circling the campus, waiting to be found. It’s Matt who comes for him, fully clothed and spinning a keychain in one finger. They have dinner together, and again the taller boy manages to make Neil talk – mainly about sports, but also about favorite foods somehow. He makes it seem so natural, sharing information about himself like it’s nothing, accepting what Neil offers and letting him have his silence.

Even more surprising: as the days pass, Neil’s attitude towards the pack changes drastically. He runs together with Seth in the morning, has lunch and spends the afternoon together with one or more of the wolves, and most dinners with Abby and sometimes Wymack. They take advantage of their last days of summer vacation to find a place for Neil among them.

As a pack, they also aren’t exactly at their best when he arrives. Neil doesn’t see them all together much, except for group outings, and even then Kevin and Andrew rarely participate. 

Seth varies from day to day – sometimes he’s as noisy and social as the others, sometimes he doesn’t even look at Neil when they run together – and Allison’s mood worsens together with his, although she deals with it way better than he does. Matt at some point decided he’ll become Neil’s best friend, and he makes it work, but his upbeat attitude clashes with Seth’s on his bad days. Dan is usually the one to mediate, and together with Renee, she pushes them to find a rhythm that works for all of them. Andrew only shows up when there’s alcohol involved, and Kevin only shows up if Andrew does.

Abby and Wymack don’t usually get involved, but the nurse does tell Neil he should just let them figure it out themselves. “You should’ve seen their first weeks here. They fought all the time, came into the office looking like a murder scene.”

When asked, Wymack echoes her, tells him to let them figure it out. “They’ll make it work. Worry about yourself, kid.”

It’s not that Neil is _worried _about them. He’s just confused. When Kevin asked for his help with the wards and the territory, he made it sound like he’d do anything to keep himself and the pack safe, but he doesn’t seem to reach out to them, doesn’t even try to _know _them. It makes Neil want to kick him, but he promised he wouldn’t interfere, so he watches from the sidelines.

Wymack will sometimes call them all to the stadium or show up for dinner just so he can keep them updated on the Riko Situation. Wymack tells them "They say he was seen in Atlanta."

"He tried to kill an Alpha in Virginia, but got away."

"A pack from Newport said they saw a hunting party from NYC, but they lost him on the river around route 11."

Kevin, looking pale and a little bit green, will say "He's coming, he's coming, he's coming."

Abby will hold him, after the others are gone, and whisper into his hair "You're safe, he's not here, he's not here." But anyone can hear the_ 'yet' _. She is, Neil is learning, very soft hearted for a nurse, and way too gentle for a wolf. She makes him think his mother's bad opinion of wolves wasn't so unbiased, after all.

Neil remembers very little of Riko Moriyama, from when they were little. He remembers watching him and Kevin play together through the windows, sometimes, but he was never allowed to go near the wolves without the adults around. Kevin used to find him all the time, though, on his hiding spots around the property, and keep him company until it was time to go back.

_("Please don't tell him where I am," Nathaniel begs from the tree branch he's perched on. Kevin is looking at him like he's an idiot, but his voice is kind when he says_

_"If you hide, coming back will be worse later."_

_Nathaniel sniffs "I don't want to go back."_

_"... If you come down now, I'll tell them we were playing hide and seek together."_

_"I'm not supposed to talk to you, though."_

_Kevin smiles, eyes twinkling "Same.")_

The Kevin from his memories is daring, unafraid and, sometimes, a little stupid. They were caught and punished together more times than Neil can remember, but it never stopped him from looking for Nathaniel. Seeing him like this makes Neil want to punch him. Riko, though. He wasn’t important enough for his father, and certainly not for his family if they didn’t keep him in New York. When he comes for Kevin, Neil can at least hope he’ll come alone.

As the pack surrounds Kevin and shows him their support, Neil watches them, itching to shake Kevin out of his wallowing, to tell him _When he comes, we will be ready. When he comes, we won't let him get away. When he comes, I'll burn him for what he did to you. _He doesn’t, of course. He’s not stupid enough to give himself away like this. But _oh _, how he wants to.

It takes Neil very little time to notice Andrew is watching him as well.

Neil catches him staring more than once, unsure if it’s an invitation for them to talk or not. The cat caution him against it: _‘It’s not the time. Be patient’ _. Andrew doesn’t speak with anyone besides Kevin and sometimes Renee. He’s made it clear he wants Neil as far away from Kevin as possible, so there’s also that to worry about – he can’t help Kevin with the territory without him being there. The cat tells him to wait, but as the week passes and the moon grows in the sky, Neil feels more and more like this will end in failure. He kind of wishes Kevin would just show up at his door in the middle of the night like Dan and Matt said he would.

Thankfully the cat is right – _‘As always’ _, it reminds him. Wednesday, at five o’clock, Renee knocks on his door with an apologetic smile plastered on her face and Andrew waiting by the car behind her, smoking.

“Good afternoon, Neil,” she says, and he can’t help but think this is some kind of trap. _‘Or a test.’ _“I hope you’re not busy.”

“I’m not. Did something happen?”

“We found something that might help you, I think.”

He relaxes a bit. “What do you mean?”

There’s a loud honk, and they both look at the car just to see Andrew already behind the wheel. Renee frowns, but when she turns to Neil, she looks apologetic. “Do you mind if we talk on the way?”

Neil _really _doesn’t want to get into the car – especially without knowing where it’ll take him – but he doesn’t have a choice, no matter how nice they try to phrase it. “Sure. Just let me get the keys.” If Renee thinks it’s weird his keys aren’t at the door he just opened, she doesn’t comment. Neil only notices the mistake when they’re already in the car, and by then it’s too late to explain, so he changes the subject. “You said you found something that could help me?”

“A tree.” Andrew supplies, not bothering with greetings. Neil looks from Renee to him, frowning. He doesn’t need a tree. “An _old _tree.” He adds after a moment. 

“How old?” He can’t help the excitement that runs through him. This might be the answer he needed—

“Older than the college, so really fucking old, I guess.”

“You’re _joking_—” Neil hisses, tries to control himself and fails miserably, “where is it?”

“It’s behind the Biology buildings, outside the main campus. We’re going there now.” Renee says, smiling at his excitement. “Depending on traffic, it might take an hour so feel free to take a nap.”

Neil manages to stay quiet for another ten minutes before asking Renee “How did it survive construction?”

“The guy who founded the college studied botany and kept it around for analysis. There are papers about it, I think. Now it’s protected by law because of its age.”

“Also, it’s too big to bring down and it’d cost them a small fortune, so the chairman decided to leave it.”

Renee shrugs. “There’s also that.”

Despite what Renee says, it takes them only half an hour to get to the Bio buildings from Abby's house. The tree can be seen from the parking lot, and Andrew was right: it’s _old _. There's moss covering the trunk, which is ridiculously big.

It makes Neil think of another tree, even older, on the woods behind his home in Wales. He used to climb it and play in it. It's beautiful. He walks faster than the others just so he can see it better.

The cat is weirdly quiet, but he can feel the roots from _here _, how deep and far they run, how much a part of the territory this tree right here is. He wants to bury his fingers in the ground under it, wants to rest his forehead against its bark, wants to climb it and hide among the leaves— it’s ridiculous and irrational and he hurts with it. _‘It even smells the same’ _, he thinks and wonders if it'll feel the same under his fingers—

The moment he touches the bark, he knows he's made a mistake. All his shields come down at once, and he suddenly understands how this tree survived this long. Not because some scholar decided to preserve it, or because of money, but because it’s home to something – someone – powerful enough to guard it. It’s not just an old tree. It’s a goddamned _elder _tree.

And it lured him.

“Stay out of range!” Neil calls out for the others, but it’s too late – he can feel when they enter the fairy’s ward, Renee’s presence back inside his head. They’re all probably cut from the pack now.

_'oh, what have we here... hello little pearl… aren't you far too far from home'_

One thing people never consider when they think about faeries is how creepy they are. Against every instinct, he doesn't look up when it speaks, keeps his hand on the tree, and keeps a tight hold on his magic. The voice is a shock by itself— both familiar and completely foreign. It’s distinctively feminine, coming from nowhere and everywhere, and it chills him to the bone. Not much to go by. He wants to run away as fast as he can, wants to burn the damn tree and whatever’s living in it to the ground, wants to turn and ask Renee and Andrew for help because this might have been the stupidest thing he's ever done. His mother would be _furious _. Now, though, his only choice is to bargain with it.

“Neil” Renee calls him, her worry echoing down the bond. The moment he becomes aware of it, Neil sends a _‘Be quiet’ _message back. “What—”

_'poor thing...' _mocks the fairy, and Renee goes silent behind him _'left to roll through the ground by itself... making mistakes... running around with beasts... what would your poor mother think'_

Neil stays quiet despite the pause it makes for him to answer, but his heart skips a beat and gives him away. The voice. It’s not just familiar. It’s his _mother’s _.

_'Oh, is she swimming in the deep pools of the undersea...' _It goes on, and he needs her to shut up he wants to burn her he can’t do this he can’t— His mother begins to sing. _'O my love, don't be so blue. For I will always be with you'_

It takes Neil only a moment to understand the lyrics in Welsh. It’s been years since he heard it, but this is his mother’s voice, and this is one of her favorite songs. The words come back easily, even if hearing them rips something open inside him. _"May the winds carry my ashes" _he recites _"and the rivers guide your tears. We shall meet again one day... and go home back to the sea."_

"You have been taught some." The voice says, and it sounds very surprised, very delighted and very _corporeal _. Neil knows the fairy just materialized because the two wolves behind him hiss and growl. He ignores them, looks up to see Mary, back when she was still hopeful from being back home and relieved they were both safe. She smiles at him and he can’t help the noise that comes out of him, like a wounded animal. He tries to look away, but he _can’t _.

The wolves move behind him and Ma— _the fairy _looks up, eyes suddenly dark and cruel. Neil says “Don’t move. Don’t look at her.” And hopes his voice isn’t shaking as much as his hands are. “Elder Mother” he greets her, and purposefully does not look at her dress – Mary’s favorite – nor her hands – clean and soft, unlike how they’d become during their years on the run – nor her eyes – intelligent and sharp, always watching where he was. _‘This isn’t her’ _the cat tells him, and he knows. _He knows _.

But.

The Elder Mother laughs, and it sounds like he’s eleven and his world is magic and safety and his mother is still sane enough to laugh when he tells her about chasing brownies through the yard. It’s stupid and cruel and he knows what is happening, knows exactly what type of magic her kind is known for, and it still manages to break his heart. “Oh don’t be so blue, little pearl, I cannot control what you see.”

His mother used to say fairies were liars and cheaters, who would manage to bargain your heart out of your chest and make you think it was a good deal. Then again, his mother called almost everything and everyone a liar and had a strong belief Neil would end up as some mythological creature’s meal sooner or later. She might’ve been right about that last one, but he’s starting to think his mother was a little too paranoid about everything else.

_‘Concentrate.’ _The cat scolds him _‘Bargain.’ _Right. Keep it talking.

“You are also very far from your home.”

"This is my home, little one." She tells him, still smiling – the way she does it is all wrong and eerie, completely unlike Mary. "I was born on this tree. Made from this earth. You, however, are from many places. You do smell of my kin's homeland, despite it being so far beyond the seas."

_'Not so far, nowadays.' _The cat jokes. Neil can’t even bring himself to rebuke it. "I have been to many places" he agrees. "But I was born on the same earth as you."

She shakes her head, her profile blurring into leaf-green and bark-brown for a moment, the afterimage a smudge her magic forces him to forget. "I wonder what your mother would say of that." Now he can say for sure she _is _mocking him. "Is that why you came here? Do you miss her so...? Do you wish to join her?"

"Not really, no."

"Of course not. But you shall go back Home sooner or later, as we all do." She makes it sound like sooner is the likeliest option. "Now then... What made you disturb my sleep."

Neil thinks _'Shit' _and _'I can't say it was by accident' _and _'oh fuck it' _then opens his mouth and hopes for the best. "I came to introduce myself. I'll be living here from now on, and it'd be rude not to."

"You will live with the howling beasts." Her eyes flicker away from him, turn dark and inhuman again, but when she looks at him it’s back to his mother’s light brown. He’s honestly surprised that none of the wolves have said anything until now – and hopes they’ll remain quiet. There’s no guarantee he can smooth things over if they make mistakes.

"Yes, I will."

"Poor you. They will sing you songs and eat your bones."

"Maybe." He concedes, ignores their growls. "Maybe they'll bury me under your roots as a gift of friendship."

Fake-Mary laughs loud and clear and _this _is a sound his mother never made. It at least helps him ignore all the points she got right for a moment and recentralize himself. Fairy or not, he came here for a reason.

"Oh, you would make a very good fertilizer." Joking, just joking. Not threatening at all. He takes a deep breath and changes the subject to a less morbid one. 

"I also came to warn you. The pack has a new alpha."

"I heard their howls from the winds, many moons ago. Their _alpha _isn't as polite as you."

"He doesn't know better."

"He won't be alpha for long if he does not learn." Neil half-screams down the bond for Andrew to stay still and not engage. She’s provoking them on purpose.

"And if I tell you I came for his sake, as much as mine?"

She goes quiet, frowning deep and angry. Neil curls into himself without even noticing. _‘Confused.’ _Whispers the cat, fast and anxious. _‘She’s confused, not angry. Not Mary.’_"Why lie for his sake?"

"He is my alpha. It's my duty."

The Elder Mother hisses – not a human sound and, more importantly, not a _Mary _sound. "You should leave now before they give you gifts you can’t refuse and tie your soul to theirs."

At this, she is also unlike his mother. Mary didn’t suggest, she _ordered_. It’s a relief, being able to differentiate the Elder Mother from the real Mary. Neil wonders if her name comes from how much she sounds like a nagging old lady. For someone who was threatening to eat him a few moments ago, she sure does enjoy giving unrequested life advice.

"I should." He agrees, just to placate her.

"You won’t, though," she says, and he can’t help but smile apologetically. Mary stays exactly where she is up on the tree, and the stupid part of his brain counts it as a win, standing up against his fake-mother and not getting hit for it.

"I also came to ask for your help," he says at last, tired of beating around the bush. The Elder Mother laughs again, shakes her head.

"I don't care for other dog's cubs."

"There are no mothers here." Neil shoots back. "And it's not like it wouldn't benefit you." He adds the last part as nonchalantly as he can, heart hammering in his chest.

"Oh?"

"We want to raise a ward. Protect the area around the campus."

"You want to use my home." All laughter leaves her expression. This is a Mary he knows, face neutral and hollow, instinct telling him he should either apologize or be ready to take a beating – but this isn’t Mary, and because of that it’s a new type of dangerous.

"It's the deepest point of contact."

"It is _mine _."

"The ward would also protect you."

"And what would it protect me from, little pearl?"

"Other packs. _Stronger _packs. Covens looking for power, like me."

The Elder Mother goes quiet, eyes still on his, unconvinced. He could say whatever he wanted, and she wouldn’t believe him because it’s not convenient for her. He needs to find a link, something, anything.

"Would you vow for your alpha, then? Would you bargain yourself? Would you let me take _you _if he broke our deal?"

Neil is so surprised she’s even considering it, he doesn’t hesitate to say “Yes.”

Mary looks deadly for a moment, all frozen fury like he’d only seen her get once or twice, then her whole demeanor changes, and she smiles again. It’s not exactly friendly.

"Call him here, then. Let us see if _he _fares better."

Andrew, who had until now been miraculously quiet, says “Kevin won’t come. And _we _won’t stay just so she can threaten us.”

“I can’t go.” Neil counters without taking his eyes off his mother. “I will stay here until a deal is sealed or you decide to leave me.”

“Neil,” Renee calls out, voice filled with worry. “Is there no other way—”

“No. You need to get out of her ward’s range and tell Kevin this is the price. A deal for a territory.”

“And your life,” his mother reminds him.

He wants to tell her he could burn this tree from inside out, but that would probably be unwise. Instead, he agrees. “And my life.”

Neil can hear the wolves discussing, quiet enough he can’t hear them, but loud enough he knows they are both pretty pissed. Inside his head the cat purrs, trying to soothe his nerves. He knows he’s staring at Mary, but can’t make himself look away. Her features make him want to act with her as he used to with his real mother, but he knows this isn’t Mary and doing so would just make things worse. He’s so worried about it, it takes him a moment to notice the silence, then the sound of someone walking away. Neil doesn’t have to look back to know who stayed anyway. It’d make more sense for—

“Well Harry Potter, you got what you wanted.” Andrew drawls. “I hope you’ve got a plan if this goes south.”

Neil’s so surprised he actually sent _Renee _to get Kevin – never mind she’s probably just a few feet away – he doesn’t answer. When The Elder Mother turns to look at him, though, he warns “Andrew, no matter what you see, this isn’t your mother.”

“… My mother isn’t made of tree bark.” The answer is jarring and completely unexpected, and it takes both him and the fairy by surprise. How Andrew Minyard became immune to the Elder Mother’s magic, he’ll never know, but he’s clearly unaffected – Andrew approaches the tree, stopping right beside Neil, and stares back at her, but there’s no sign of compulsion, nothing. The fairy lets out a sharp laugh, eyes sparkling green.

“Oh, I _like _this one. There’s not a _hint _of motherhood in him. No politeness either.” To Andrew, she says “Maybe I’ll kill you before burying you.”

“Maybe I’ll make a doorknob with your face.”

Neil sighs. “Stop encouraging her.”

Mary gazes back at Neil, smiling at him. “Oh don’t be so boring. I’m trying to help you here, little pearl. Aren’t you afraid they’ll leave you behind, take away the parts of you they need and let you rot in my roots?”

“We need him whole,” Andrew answers for him. _They’ll use you then eat you_, his mother whispers in his ear.

“Of course you do,” she says, mockingly “There’ll be more of him for you to eat later.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s cannibalism.”

“Oh, you don’t fool me, changeling. You are the worst of them, raw power and pure violence. Just because you weren’t born this way, doesn’t mean you are still human and soft.”

“I was never soft.”

The fairy smiles and smiles, clearly entertained. “Everyone is soft on the inside.”

Andrew growls. “We can still burn you down to ashes, old lady.”

“No. We can’t.” Neil hisses, furious and terrified, but the fairy only laughs, loud and amused.

“No, you can’t. The cavalry's here.”

Renee comes back into the ward then, bringing a wave of relief with her as she does. “Kevin is almost here.” She stutters to a halt, probably smelling Neil’s anxiety. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, “Nothing. What does she look like to you?”

“…She looks like my mother. My adoptive mother.” Renee admits after a moment. Interesting, he thought it was a wolf thing, for a moment.

“Stephanie.” The fairy says, staring at Renee, then, at Neil. “Mary.” And finally, to someone out of sight, she adds. “Kayleigh. Hello, alpha.”

Even Neil feels it when Kevin breaches the wards – the bond between them suddenly clearer, the wolves’ presences somehow bigger inside his head. He comes as a wolf and doesn’t even look at the tree as he approaches, brushing against Renee’s side, then Andrew’s, before finally coming to sit behind Neil, pressing his body against his back. It’s an unexpected weight, but a familiar one and knowing Kevin is here is more of a comfort than Neil thought it would be.

There’s worry and confusion echoing down the bond now that they are all inside the fairy’s wards, and Kevin keeps repeating _witch witch witch _until Neil says “I’m fine”.

Kevin huffs out a breath then shifts into human, the sounds of bones breaking and reforming now almost familiar. He doesn’t move from pressing into Neil’s back though. “How did you get into this situation again?” Is the first thing he asks, sounding way more annoyed than what he’d implied through the bond.

"Radagast here wanted to hug the tree and ended up getting stuck," Andrew says, without a hint of humor. Kevin growls, chest rumbling.

"I mean, this could've gone better," Neil admits.

"Oh, I think it’s going perfectly," the fairy says, staring at the wolves. Neil prays this isn't some kind of attempt at flirting – Kevin is _still _naked, because werewolves, and hearing his mother make innuendos at him would be very uncomfortable.

Kevin finally looks up, and there’s the expected wave of shock and grief and Neil does his best to soothe it, repeating what the cat had told him: _not_ _real, it’s not real, it’s not her_. Kevin says “I—” and hesitates. Neil can almost hear the questions he doesn’t ask, can feel him fighting to control himself. It takes a long agonizing minute before he speaks again. "I was told you called for me. I hope my witch isn't bothering you too much." Kevin says, somehow managing to sound polite. "As you are aware, I am Kevin Day, the new Alpha of this pack. Thank you for being willing to talk to me and mine."

“Hello, Kevin Day,” Mary says. Neil remembers the first time she’d spoken his name _(“The Alpha of All is dead” Nathan had told them at dinner. “And her child, Kevin?” Mary had asked, watching Neil, so tiny in his chair, try to reach for his little juice cup. “Tetsuji will take him in.”) _“How nice of you to come and greet me.”

“I apologize for the delay. To be honest, until Neil came here we weren’t aware of your presence.”

_(“I assumed he would die as well” Mary had said, “such a horrible… Accident. The Moriyamas are very generous.”)_

“Your little witch told me you want something.” The fairy says, testing the waters.

“Yes. He didn’t tell me what you might want in return, though.” Letting her choose her price is risky, but there’s nothing Neil can do – interrupting now would be disrespectful.

“I want many things...” Mary starts, eyes glinting.

“Good. It’s just a matter of finding out what we can and cannot give you, then.” ‘_ Smart, Kevin. Nice save.’_

“The witch—”

“Is not a bargaining chip.” Kevin cuts her off, voice firm.

“The witch,” she repeats, glaring at him, “suggested protection, but as you can see I’m already well protected.”

“Maybe against a non-hostile group.” Kevin agrees diplomatically. “But it’s always better to have a pack of werewolves on your side, no?”

Mary stares and stares at him, and for a crazy moment Neil considers destroying her wards just so she knows what he is capable of – but before he can, the cat tells him to_‘watch and wait’ _, so he stays still and lets her think. “I want to be in control of the ward,” the fairy says after a long while, and Neil thinks _no_.

“No,” Kevin says, probably echoing him. “But you can be a part of the casting, so you know what is happening.”

“This is my tree.”

“And the wards will be over _my _territory.”

Mary jumps from the tree and lands only a few feet away from Kevin, probably pissed off at how unafraid they all are, and Renee shifts behind them, growling low in her throat. Neil can’t help but wonder if she would be able to attack her own mother. The fairy doesn’t even acknowledge her, staring straight at Kevin. “You are way too sure these lands will bind themselves to you, don’t you think?”

“I think there’s no reason for them not to.” The fairy hisses and bares her teeth, black and sharp and Neil feels his magic react to the threat, fire crackling in his ears, Renee looking one second away from pouncing, but their alpha says “Don’t.”

And they don’t.

Even Mary hesitates, taking a step back before she notices it and stops. Frowning, she looks down at her feet and after a moment murmurs “I see…”.

They all stay very still for a long time, as the fairy thinks.

“I agree to your terms. Your protection for my permission to use this tree and put up wards in your territory.”

This time, Kevin asks Neil what he thinks – a half-formed, wordless thought that is more _‘???’ _than anything – before shaking his head. “My protection for your help with Neil’s wards.”

The fairy laughs probably notices his wording, but _finally _agrees. “As you wish, little alpha. The deal is sealed.” She reaches a hand to touch the bark, and Neil feels the wave of magic that runs through the tree’s roots to its last leaf, and Neil can finally press his forehead against bark and moss and hear the flux of life and magic and everything in-between that runs above and under and all around them.

The tree feels a little like the bonds of the pack do – like roots and rainwater, like something that is always there in the back of his mind waiting to be noticed. He reaches out and nudges against it, testing the waters, before deciding that yes, it can be done.

He says “Kevin”, and his alpha is already there, right beside him, one hand in the small of his back, the other covering Neil’s hand on the bark. The Elder Mother keeps her hand where it is, and when he closes his eyes he can feel them, as much a part of this as him.

Neil could draw the ward’s sigils on the bark if he wanted to, but if he did it, and the fairy decided to wipe even one of them off, or if some ignorant student came and scratched them off, the wards would come down and there’s no way he’ll waste time remaking them for nothing.

He doesn’t even hesitate to sing, tattoos flaring and reacting to his magic, and even though he hasn’t sung in ages, the melody comes easy, each word a thread that ties itself around him, and it takes nothing but a nudge for it to reach for Kevin as well, round and round the alpha and the bond and the wolves tied to it. With another tiny nudge, the fairy is also included, her magic rising to meet his, a short clash before she sets her own boundaries and they refocus on what really matters.

_We will call this place our home,_

_the dirt in which our roots may grow._

_Though the storms will push and pull_

_we will call this place our home._

_We’ll tell our stories on these walls._

_Every year, measure how tall._

_And just like a work of art,_

_we’ll tell our stories on these walls._

_Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind._

_Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide._

_Settle our bones like wood over time, over time._

_Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine._

_Smaller than dust on this map lies the greatest thing we have:_

_the dirt in which our roots may grow, and the right to call it home._

And with the last words sung, the ward _snaps _into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in Welsh the Elder Mother sings doesn't actually exist lol, but the one Neil uses to put up the wards is North, by Sleeping at Last. Do take into consideration he would most likely recite it with rhythm instead of singing it - but I absolutely LOVE their music and the entirety of the Space albums.  
Come talk to me about the fic or music or whatever at belladonna-queen.tumblr.com !!


	5. wolf and witch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I hope you like this one, things are finally picking up! Thank all of you for your support!  
(P.S.: A very sweet anon came to warn me about some confusing things on the first part of this chapter, so I've changed it a little to try and make it better. Thank you, anon, and I hope it makes more sense now!)

The moment they get into the car, Neil explodes "Are you _ stupid _ ? You come alone in an alleged rescue mission, _ as a wolf _—"

"I wasn't the one who got stuck in a fucking tree—"

"In the middle of the _ day _—"

"It's almost dark! And there's no one around anyway!"

"There are, Kevin! People _work_ here! Do you think the campus cleans itself?! You ran around as a wolf and didn't have the decency of bringing clothes!"

"Oh my god, you sound like a fucking old lady—"

"We were dealing with a _who-knows-how-old_ _fairy_! What would you have done if you'd offended her?"

"I'd fight her," Kevin says, simply.

"You would've lost us the best spot for the fucking wards you wanted me to pull off my ass," Neil hisses, too pissed off to realize he's being rude.

"Well, I got them, didn't I? After _ you _got stuck."

"I _ didn't _ —" _ 'Don't' _ calls the cat. Neil stops, breathes in and regroups. Saying he is powerful enough to burn a magical tree down would be even more stupid than getting stuck with a fairy was. He looks down and away from the alpha and mutters "whatever."

"Whatever." Mocks Kevin, but he also hunches down on his seat, crosses his arms and spends the rest of the trip back sulking.

.

They take him to the pack house, instead of Abby's. The others are all there, the nurse waiting anxiously by the door to check them for injuries before dragging them downstairs and into a basement. Neil's not really surprised to find the pack waiting for them there. He's more surprised to hear them inside his head, a cacophony of _ are they hurt, are they fine, what happened _, that makes his head hurt. He doesn't bring the wards up, though. Renee is still shaking a little, and Kevin might not admit but he was also upset by the encounter. Seeing your dead mother does that to a person. There are blankets and beanbags and as the werewolves approach, Andrew avoids the latter and plops down on one of the former. Dan hugs Neil tight, then Matt, then Seth checks him from head to toe in a search for injuries. Renee and Kevin receive a similar treatment, but nobody approaches Andrew – although Neil sees them sending looks his way.

They settle eventually, Wymack and Abby leaving to go back to the stadium, the others choosing to stay with their pack members for a little while longer. Neil’s sitting on the single couch with Kevin, surprisingly, lying down with his feet on Neil’s lap. Renee is on a beanbag beside Andrew’s, who’s either sleeping or pretending to. Neil still can't really hear him through the bond. Leaving it open like this is weird, but the others had all freaked out from being cut out from Renee and Andrew and hearing him like this seems to settle him, so he lets them have this.

"Why did you choose that song?" Kevin asks him quietly.

Still twitchy from the amount of raw magic he'd used today, Neil panics for a moment – _ 'does Kevin suspect something? Did he recognize my singing voice? Did I accidentally choose a song we heard together all those years ago?' 'No, no, no' _answers the cat – before giving in and asking "Why?"

"It wasn't a traditional ward chant, was it?"

Neil wonders how Kevin even knows about traditional chants. "No, it wasn't." He hopes that’s enough, but when he doesn’t say anything else Kevin sends him a _ look_, so he sights and keeps going "I told you before that the territory wouldn't submit just because you want it to. So, instead of forcing a ward up, I made the territory a promise."

Renee looks up from her phone at that. "What do you mean?"

"I've told you, I can't force the territory to accept us, to accept Kevin as it's alpha. So the song was a promise. I asked it to give us _ time_, so we can use this time to learn about it and grow closer to it. Using the Elder Mother’s magic also helped, I think, because it knows her."

"A bargain inside a bargain. Are you mad?" Kevin asks him, disbelieving.

"I got stuck. It was either that or killing the fairy, and that would be a waste." Neil shrugs. 

"I don't like this," the alpha says, pressing his feet to Neil's thigh.

Most of the others ignore him, and he's probably just sulking, so Neil does the same.

Renee grins at him, eyes shining. "I can't believe you tricked a fairy."

"I—" Neil hesitates for a moment before saying "I don't think I did. I'm pretty sure she let herself be convinced."

Andrew stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake.

"What do you mean?" Dan asks from where she’s using Matt as a pillow.

"I just— She agreed too easily. It felt like— like she was expecting us to go, eventually. She didn’t realize you didn’t know about the tree."

Allison snorts. "I didn’t even know there were fairies out there. I thought they were legends."

He can't stop the small smile that tugs at his lips.

"Well, that’s what they say about us."

.

The next day, when Neil comes back from lunch with the pack, Andrew is waiting for him in front of Abby's house. There are five days until the full moon, and all the wolves showed up to run with him that morning, even Abby and Wymack, trying to burn as much energy as possible. Neil, who couldn’t sleep well the night before because of how hyperaware he’d been of the bond and the wards and the _ magic _ , deeply regretted leaving his bed. It didn’t help that the wolves kept _ noticing _ him there, as surprised by his presence as he was by theirs. 

Through the run and after that, during their lunch together, they wouldn’t stop touching him, brushing shoulders and patting him on the back and leaning to his side and pressing their foot to his. He always knew wolves were touchy, but never to this extent.

The moment he notices Andrew there, Neil unfastens his seatbelt. “Thanks for the ride.” He tells Matt before he offers to stay. “I'll see you later, yeah?”

Matt frowns, but stops the truck behind Andrew's car. “Are you sure? I can—”

“I'm sure. Bye, Matt.”

Neil leaves the car as fast as he can and waves him away. If Andrew is here, apparently without Kevin, either something really bad happened or he decided to get rid of Neil before he dragged Kevin into an even worse situation than the day before. Either way, he would rather be alone for this. When the truck disappears from sight, he turns to Andrew, nodding his greeting.

“Kevin came to run with us this morning.” He says, because Andrew wasn’t there. When he asked Kevin about it that morning, the alpha had growled and ran ahead.

Andrew doesn’t even react to his words. “Is your bag packed?”

“My— bag? Yes?”

“Go take it. You’re coming back to the house with me.”

Neil stares at him, unsure if this is an Andrew-thing or a Kevin-thing. None of the others had said anything about it. Instead of explaining things or repeating himself, however, Andrew just stares back.

“Are you sure?” Neil asks finally.

“Kevin wants you there.” Andrew explains after a long moment. “The others trust you.”

“And you?”

“I think you’re hiding something. But I still have time to figure you out.”

Neil stares and stares, completely put off by his honesty and simple-mindedness “I’m not a puzzle.”

“You’re interesting enough. Now go take your shit so we can leave.”

Neil just turns and goes into the house, half-running to his room to get both the cat and his bag. There’s nothing out of place, as expected. He takes his sheets and rolls them into a ball to wash later – he might need to buy a new set now that he’ll no longer be a guest. The cat positions itself on the corner of the mattress, paws tucked in and comfortable. Not a minute later, though, it looks up sharply, calling out _ ‘He’s coming’ _, surprising him out of his mind.

Except when Neil tries to pick it up, it moves out of range, its fur standing up to make it seem bigger. “_ Why _ aren’t you—” Neil hisses, then shuts up when Andrew knocks on the portal. The cat stares at the wolf, the wolf stares back. Neil quietly prays it stays quiet because otherwise, this might end in disaster.

“I didn’t know you had a pet.”

The cat’s tail swishes back and forth. _ ‘He doesn’t.’ _

Neil groans, letting his head hang for a moment. “This is my familiar. It’s usually not like this.” He reaches for the cat, and again it steps away, still glaring at Andrew.

_ ‘Ask your questions, goth wolf.’ _ To Neil, inside his mind, it says _ ‘Answer truthfully. This is your chance.’ _

Andrew, watching the cat, says “You used music to make the ward.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“That’s… Not easy to explain. There are different types of magic. Some witches use rituals, some use sigils, some use music.”

“And the cat?”

“It’s a tattoo.” _ And a little shit _ . It turns to blink at him, suddenly finding the situation amusing. _ ‘Ink and magic and flesh and fur__, a home away from home.’ _ “Shut up.”

“What’s its name?”

“…It doesn’t have one.” _ ‘You called me Weird.’ _ “I said you _ felt _ weird. You wouldn’t stop moving around. Now shut up and come here.” _ ‘…No.’ _

“Is it even alive?” Andrew asks, a small frown between his eyebrows. He’s probably confused by the lack of a heartbeat.

_ ‘Yes’ _ “Not really.” It huffs. _ ‘Your heart is my heart’ _ it recites, the same words Neil had told it all those years ago, _ ‘my magic your breath.’ _ “It doesn’t mean you’re alive, just that you are mine.” _ ‘And you mine.’ _ Neil can’t help but roll his eyes. _ ‘This is not the question you had for us.’ _ The cat says after a moment, turning its attention back to Andrew. The whole exchange feels weird with someone else watching.

“Yesterday. You didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Neil hesitates and turns to the cat, remembering that it hadn’t warned him about the fairy. “Did you?” _ ‘Maybe.’ _ “Why didn’t you warn me? Did you _ want _ me to get stuck?” _ ‘... Maybe.’ _ Neil groans, frustrated.

“Shouldn’t you tell him everything?” Andrew asks the cat.

“It _ should _.”

_ ‘Danger brings people together.’ _

“Oh fuck you, I could’ve died.”

_ ‘Nah.’ _

Neil has a strong urge to kick the damn cat. He points a finger to it, a wordless warning, then looks up to check Andrew’s reaction. With eyes are narrowed to slits, Andrew says. “Wymack told us you knew he was coming.”

Oh, so this is what he wanted to ask. “I knew he was a werewolf the moment I saw him.” Neil admits. “I didn’t know he was in town until he sat in front of me, though.”

“You knew him by name.” Andrew disagrees.

_ ‘ _ I _ did.’ _ The cat corrects, looking very smug about it. _ ‘He gave it to the waitress.’ _

Neil sighs again, rubbing his temples. “My familiar has a very bad habit of keeping things from me and sharing only when it’s convenient.”

“It wanted you to come?” He looks very disbelieving. Neil can’t blame him, he’s felt the same for _ years _ now.

“Yeah. It was very persistent about it.” _ ‘Pack is family is home is safe.’ _ “… It wouldn’t stop saying that.”

“Your cat has more personality than you.” Andrew says. The cat actually starts purring loudly at that, looking ridiculously smug. Neil hopes it chokes on its own non-existent spit. “Why no one else saw it until now?”

“Because it was supposed to stay here guarding the room _ in silence _. I don’t know why it’s refusing to come back right now.”

_ ‘It’s boring.’ _

_ I’ll pay for someone to remove you, I _ swear_. _

“Is this it? Is this what you didn’t want them to find out?”

_ ‘No.’ _ Neil’s going to _ burn _ this stupid cat. _ ‘Honesty, honesty.’ _ “… No. But I won’t tell _ you _ either.”

“Why?”

_ ‘If he tells you I’ll have to kill you’ _ the cat answers, clearly joking. Neil shrugs. “And I’d probably leave.”

Andrew stares at him, gaze unwavering. “Renee thinks you’re a runaway from some pack with a tragic backstory.”

“You were there yesterday. You heard the Elder Mother.”

“Did it really look like your mother?”

“Yes. It did.” Neil doesn’t look at him as he answers, but he knows he’s being studied. “And yes, she’s dead, before you ask.”

“Did you kill her?” The question catches him by surprise, but when he turns to look at Andrew his gaze is unwavering and without a hint of judgment.

“No.” And, because he now understands what the cat is trying to do by sharing things with Andrew, he adds “My father did.”

“Was she your tether?” The word sounds foreign to him, like he’s not sure if it’s the right one. It’s expected, though, considering how little time it’s been since he got turned.

“She was.”

“And now?”

Neil says nothing. There are no words to explain the fraying threads that still connect him to his mother, even dead and ashes in the waves. There are no words to explain what he felt when she died – how her last heartbeat echoed through his bones, how he felt her fading away little by little, how he still heard her into his head sometimes. Losing her almost killed him, and sometimes he still wished it had. He can’t explain it in a way Andrew would understand.

He doesn’t have to. The wolf cocks his head and watches Neil shrug and look down, but instead of insisting, he just nods. “I don’t have a mother. I think that’s why I could see the fairy’s true form.” Neil stares, waiting for Andrew to either ask something else or share another bit of himself. He doesn’t disappoint. “What are tethers anyway?”

Neil only needs a moment to formulate an explanation. “My mother told me they are what binds a wolf to their humanity. What keeps them from being feral. For some, it’s a person, but it can also be a feeling, or the pack. Losing their tether might turn a wolf mad.”

Andrew takes three long steps, stopping right in front of Neil, their similar heights bringing them chest to chest, face to face.

“And witches? You said it binds wolfs to their humanity, but aren’t witches human?”

“We are. But magic is— it’s everywhere. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. For a witch, our tether is like a lifeline, something to drag us back, when we drown.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Drowned?”

The cat moves, finally sliding closer to its master, pressing itself against his legs. Neil laughs, the sound small and hollow. He doesn’t look at Andrew as he answers “I’ve been drowning for ages.”

Andrew stares at him for a long time, eyes dark and face unreadable. Finally, he asks “Why did you come here?”

“Because I’m tired. Tired of running and tired of drowning.”

And just like that Andrew nods and steps away from Neil’s personal space. “Pick your weird cat up and let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew finally talks. I'm pretty sure a bunch of people were starting to think this fic was a Rick Rolling Kevin x Neil with a side Andrew, so here folks, finally some good fucking content. (just kidding, I love this chapter but I fully believe the previous ones were absolutely essential)  
I really hope you liked it, and feel free to come and talk to me about it on tumblr (belladonna-queen), if you want to!!!


	6. the first moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! The full moon is upon us at last! I'm so excited I can't even!!  
Thank all of you for your support, I think you'll like this one.

It takes Neil almost three hours to settle in at the pack house. Andrew gives him a house tour that comes down to “here’s the kitchen and here’s the bathroom and here’s your room” before disappearing down the hall on the second floor. Neil’s room is actually Matt and Seth’s room, and apparently, none of them were expecting him so there’s a lot of fussing and looking for tools to assemble the bed Wymack bought for him days ago. Seth complains for almost an hour about losing his nap space under the window but tells Neil to shut up the moment he suggests he could sleep somewhere else. Later, when Dan arrives, she gives him an actual tour because “there are important things other than food storage and sleeping area, I swear to god—”

Andrew stays inside his room for the rest of the day, but Neil sees Kevin once or twice, sulking around the house, mumbling to himself and glaring at everything. It’s pretty obvious the alpha wanted to be his roommate but wasn’t allowed to. It’s probably for the best, anyway – knowing he’s so close by is already weird enough. Through all that, he tries very hard not to think of how difficult it will be from now on, having to sleep with them and trust them not to kill him while he sleeps. He’s sure they can feel his anxiety through the bond, and it at least means they try to give him a little space.

That night, when it’s dark enough outside, Kevin shows up in Neil’s room and tells him to hurry up and get ready. He’s clearly in a bad mood, and it’s probably best to just agree but Neil, already comfortable in bed, can’t help but ask “Why?”

“I’ll be waiting downstairs” Is all the alpha says before leaving.

Neil sighs and drags himself slowly from under the blankets. Matt watches him put on some shoes, mumbling the whole time about bossy dogs, and asks, “You know you can just ignore him, right?”

Neil turns to answer “Yeah” and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

Kevin is waiting for him in front of the house, Andrew already inside the car behind them. He comes to meet Neil halfway, presses a hand to his heart and leaves it there for an uncomfortable moment, then says “Let’s go.”

They ride in silence until they leave the campus, and Andrew stops the car so Kevin can get out and transform, leaving them to run by himself. Neil almost reaches for the door handle, so he can join the alpha, but Andrew starts the car and gets them back in the road before he can leave. “We’re the backup” he explains after a moment. “just in case something happens to him.”

At first, there’s not much to be said. There’s a car and miles of road ahead and weirdly enough the silence is soothing. Most nights Kevin runs alone as a wolf and Andrew follows him as best as he can by car, Neil riding with him. Some nights Andrew turns the radio on and lets music play on the background. Most nights they are all quiet, save for an occasional comment from Kevin’s end about “weird shadows” or “funny rocks”. Once or twice they take a detour to check on the Elder Tree, but the fairy isn’t there. 

Some nights they talk, about magic, about the history of werewolves, about hunting and being hunted, or one of Andrew’s weird references. 

“So, do you have any lost brothers and sisters in the world out there? Did you compete against each other to decide which one got to be a wizard? Was there a test?”

Neil sighs, deep and frustrated. “Of course not. Where do you even _ get _ all those weird ideas from?”

He doesn’t exactly expect an answer, and the conversation is over and done with after Andrew sends him another of his usual_ ‘I can’t believe people like you exist’ _ looks.

Sometimes Kevin asks questions he’s curious about – mostly the pack and how it is like for Neil to be a part of it. Most of the time Andrew just watches, eyes brown and honey and orange in the streetlights, growing more and more silent as the moon grows bigger in the sky. After the perimeter check is over, Andrew will park the car in an empty field and either take a nap or smoke a cigarette, leaving Neil to join Kevin as he runs about scratching things or lies down in the grass. Talking to Kevin is another surprise – if not for how easy it is, then definitely for how fun it becomes.

Neil kind of gets why everyone else seems to find denying him amusing – he’s easy to please and even easier to annoy. All it takes is him suggesting “Maybe we should invite the others to come” for Kevin to go on a half-hour-long rant about pack unity and Andrew making his life harder than it should be. Complaining about Andrew is apparently a hobby, especially when he’s close enough to listen.

“I don’t understand why he insists on doing that” Kevin grumbles to Neil once, staring at where Andrew is lying on his car’s hood, smoking his fifth cigarette. Its two nights before the full moon and Neil still thinks they should’ve invited at least some of the others, but Andrew had been almost emanating grumpiness so no one else volunteered. “I know for a fact the smoke hurts _his_ nose just as much as it does mine. And now you stink of it too. Urgh.”

Andrew raises an arm, and they can see him flipping Kevin the bird with how clear the night is. Neil, sitting in the grass, hands buried in grass and dirt, a current of _life _under his fingertips, couldn’t care less about Andrew’s bad habits. He laughs at Kevin and at his reaction, expects himself to forget about it in a few moments, but he’s kind of curious, now. So the next night, while Kevin is running in the fields, Neil asks him.

Andrew sends him a look like he can’t believe he’s wasting his time with something that stupid, but after some time he answers “I already smoked before. There’s no reason to stop now.” There are many reasons why he could’ve stopped smoking, but Neil just shrugs and lets it be. The smoke doesn’t bother him anyway. He’s surprised, though, when Andrew asks a question of his own, a few minutes later. “Why did you choose a cat?”

So Neil grins and tells him of the old feral cat that lived in their cellar and let him pet it but refused to let Mary near it. He talks about learning anatomy and coloring and tattooing techniques. There’s nothing particularly personal about the memories – he doesn’t tell Andrew much about his uncle or his mother or even about the house itself, but surprisingly he doesn’t_ need _to. When there’s nothing else to be said, they both go back to being quiet, watching the road together until Kevin calls them. 

.

The first time Neil has a nightmare at the house, he wakes up shaking and pressing a hand to his mouth so he doesn’t wake anyone. It’s obviously useless because they are werewolves and probably woke up the moment his heart rate picked up, but instead of bothering or asking him questions, Seth brings him a bottle of water and Matt sits on the ground beside his bed, waiting for him to calm down.

“I’m sorry for waking you up, but it’s fine,” Neil tells them a long time later. His hands are still shaking on his lap and he can’t look either of them in the eye. “You don’t have to stay up with me.”

“You can leave your wards up, if you want to, you know?” Matt says, choosing to ignore what he said. Neil looks up sharply, surprised by how serious and earnest he looks. “If you feel unsafe or unprotected without them up, you can just keep doing it.”

“I’m f—”

“Don’t.” Seth stops him. “You stink of fear and it woke me up.” He seems to realize how harsh he’s sounding a moment later because he does add “Not your fault though.”

Matt rolls his eyes, but nods. “Yeah, it’s not your fault. And if you need us, we’re here.”

There’s no way to explain Neil can’t sleep_ because _they are here – because the cat isn’t watching, and he can’t know if someone will come and get him as he sleeps. He tries though, words coming out stilted and wrong “I can’t put the ward up, I need— I had a— an alarm. But it’d pick up on anything moving, and with you here it’s— it’s complicated.”

Both wolves look surprised, maybe with how much he’s sharing, but a moment later Matt gives him a reassuring smile, “In that case, why don’t I keep watch?”

“What?”

“I can keep watch as you sleep. I mean, we’re nocturnal, right? And I can sleep the whole morning if I want to.”

“Matt that’s— you don’t _ have _ to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He waves a dismissive hand and gets up quickly, already taking his pajama shirt off “We can test it and see if it helps.”

Neil stammers and tries to argue, but a moment later there’s a brown and black wolf standing on the floor beside his bed, and it— _ he _ only takes a moment to lick his hand before lying down, head turned towards the door, ears perched and attentive, and despite Neil’s protests, Seth just shrugs and goes back to his own bed with an “I can take tomorrow if you need me to.”

Next morning Neil wakes up with one hand dangling out of bed and buried into the soft fur of Matt’s neck, and all he can think is _ ‘so this is what trust feels like’_.

.

The day of the full moon begins with every single wolf showing up at Neil’s room to ask what his plans are for the day. They don’t even have the sense to come at once and get it over and done with, oh no, they come one by one, starting with Matt turning back into a human and ending with Allison not so politely barging in while Matt’s getting changed to scream “We’re all— stop complaining I’ve seen you naked tons of times— we’re all having a lunch party and _ you _” and here she points a sharp nail at him “have to be there no matter what!”

“Uh, okay?”

“Good. Get ready.”

“… Allison, it’s eight o’clock.”

“So what?”

When Neil turns to look at him, hoping to gather support, Seth just shrugs. “It’s never too early for a party.”

So, despite his protests, they all end up together in the living room with Dan’s computer connected to the TV, too much food on the coffee table and a loud discussion about what they should watch. There’s absolutely no part of it that looks like a party, but at least it’s the kind of party Neil can actually handle.

Every single one of them goes quiet when Andrew shows up in the doorway with the DVDs for the first season of _ Wizards of Waverly Place_. “He’s never watched it.” Is all he needs to say for every single werewolf to scream into Neil’s ear a thousand variants of “You have to watch it _now _!” and “Where have you been living, under a rock?!”, despite him clearly telling them time and time again _he’s not even a wizard_.

Twenty-one episodes later Neil is not only confused by why people enjoy the series so much but also pissed off at how many things they manage to get wrong. He repeats the phrase “You can’t actually _do _that” so many times Kevin actually kicks him and tells him to shut up.

There’s no pause – Renee buys them lunch by some app on her cellphone and Matt and Dan pick it up when the doorbell rings. Wolves move in and out of the room constantly, leaving after getting bored then coming back because there’s nothing better to do, anyway. Neil is allowed bathroom breaks, but they always pause it so he feels bad and comes back. For some unknown reason, there’s a consensus that he has to suffer through all eight hours of a poorly researched children’s show’s first season. And when he thinks it’s over, Allison shows up with one of the movies.

“I’d rather die, thanks,” Neil says the moment she says they can watch it next. “Besides, isn’t it getting late?” Outside, the sun is beginning to set, and the full moon is already in the sky. The moment his words leave his mouth Andrew gets up abruptly, his whole posture tense as he leaves the room. Allison is arguing that there’s still a lot of time before they have to leave, but Neil stops listening the moment the cat says _ ‘follow him.’ _

_ ‘Why?’ _

_ ‘He’s leaving. You should go too.’ _

Neil doesn’t need any more incentive to get up. He can hear Andrew on the upper floor, probably picking up his keys, so he moves towards the front door instead. Allison tries to stop him, and he’s ready to just find a shitty excuse and leave through the bathroom window without them knowing, but thankfully Renee steps in. “Allison, let him go.”

“No way, it’s only an hour and a half, it won’t kill him—”

“We can do that later. This is important.”

They all hear Andrew’s steps coming down the stairs, and it’s pretty obvious they are drawing their own conclusions if Seth’s smirk is anything to go by, but Neil doesn’t really want to explain, so he nods at Renee and leaves.

Andrew looks entirely unimpressed when he sees Neil waiting for him by the car – he kind of expects him to put up a fight, but he doesn’t. He opens and gets into the car and ignores it when Neil does the same.

Earlier that day Wymack had called and given the directions to where they should meet up. After fiddling with his phone, Andrew manages to find a viable route so they have to walk as little as possible, and they ride in silence as always, except this time there’s an energy to the air that wasn’t there before.

Neil knows, theoretically, what the full moon does to the wolves – he was never allowed to participate when he was younger, but he remembers staying up, those nights, to hear the pack’s howls. It was always a good time because his father wasn’t home, and he could do whatever he wanted without being afraid.

_ (He remembers Kevin’s eyes shining – always the same shade of brown, always the same shade of orange, human or wolf – he remembers fingers carting through his hair soothingly and a wolf’s low whine and the howls of a pack singing in tandem even as their future alpha chose to stay inside with a child instead. He remembers many things. He’s still learning to live with that.) _

There’s a lot of green areas north of Columbia, near the lakes, and the wards cover most of it. Wymack somehow gets them access to one of the parks through a side gate, and that’s where Andrew parks before they set on foot. The park is mostly dark and completely quiet, and Neil appreciates the amount of nature there is around them for once.

Once they get to the chosen clearing, hopefully deep enough the howls don’t carry, Andrew stops at its edge while Neil checks the perimeter. He runs his hands through some of the trees, checks to make sure there are no cameras or weird electronic devices lying around, gathers all the trash in one corner. When he turns to Andrew, fully intending on talking strategy, the wolf hasn’t moved an inch.

It's obvious – by the set of his jaw and how tense his body is – that Andrew does not trust Neil enough for this to work. The barrier won't take, or it will but Andrew will break it in seconds and then there’ll be a rogue werewolf running around the city. And it’ll be his fault for not trying harder. Stupid Neil, as if a week of car rides would be enough to convince anyone to trust him.

Neil’s anxiety must be pretty obvious, because after a moment Andrew actually huffs and comes to stand near him. Not close, but near. Neil quietly thanks his cat for the time they have before the pack arrives and keeps his voice as even as possible when he addresses Andrew. "What can I do to make this easier?"

Andrew goes tenser but refuses to answer. Above them, the sun is already gone, a silent reminder of how little time they have until the full moon is up in the sky. Neil wants to growl, or scream. He wants to tell Andrew he _needs_ to stop being so stubborn. He wants to— but he doesn't. He's seen how badly Andrew reacts to orders of any kind. He's a contrary little shit, and Neil might appreciate it, but he doesn't have the time to deal with it right now.

He tries for honesty instead. "This won't work if you don't want it. I told you— I can't make cages, only barriers. Is there anything—"

"You said it's give and take." Andrew interrupts him. Neil’s a little amazed he remembered.

"I— yes. You give up one kind of freedom to gain another. They won't hear you while you're inside, and you won't hear them. You'll be— _ stuck _— in the clearing, but you'll also be away from them. This is your chance to sort yourself out without the whole pack inside your head."

"And you? What do you give and take from this?"

_ ‘Clever wolf, clever’ _ the cat cautions.

"I give power." Neil settles for, at last. "And I take power." The answer doesn't satisfy Andrew in the least, if the dark look he sends Neil’s way is anything to go by, so he adds with a sigh "This is my first time in a pack, too. You know that. Being part of a pack is— different from what I'm used to. This is my chance to settle into the bond."

He hopes that'll be the end of it, but Andrew only takes a moment to think it over before he has another question “Do I have to be alone?”

_ That _takes Neil by surprise. With how annoyed Andrew seemed to be around the others, the last thing he expected was for him to want _company_. “I don’t— I never tried with more than one person, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.”

“Then that is what it’ll take.” Andrew decides. “If you want me to do this, you’ll have to do it too.”

“What— _ why _—”

“If your wards are safe, then you won’t mind being inside them with me, will you?” The bastard wolf interrupts, and it’s clear he _wants _Neil to protest, _ wants _him to call it off.

There’s no way being inside what is basically a containment cage with a berserk wolf will end well for Neil, but let’s be honest here, he doesn’t have much choice. Wymack only recruited him for this exact reason, and they all seem to think he’s got it under control. The only one who knows he’s full of bullshit is probably Andrew, and _he’s _the one Neil is supposed to work with. His life is a shit show. But it doesn’t matter. He wants to stay here, wants to be a part of this pack, so if they want him to help Andrew, help Andrew he will.

So he takes a steadying breath, hisses at the cat for _not warning him _about this and nods. “It can be done. Actually, it might be easier. A protective spell can hold the two of us inside. I need to think, though, it’s been a while since—” he stops himself from finishing the lie. He’s protected himself many times since his mother’s death. This is no different. “Excuse me.” He finishes instead, turning his back to the wolf and roaming the clearing again, looking for good places to write on the ground.

_ ‘Stop sulking’ _ the cat chides, sounding very much like a mother. Not _his _mother, but _a _ mother— like the ones in books.

_ ‘Stop bothering me’ _ he hisses back, knowing he sounds like a child— or, well, the ones on books anyway. Before the cat can annoy him further, he shoots it a question. _ ‘Can he hurt me?’ _

_ ‘Yes.’ _ The answer is vague, and he’s had enough discussions about asking the right questions to know it’s doing it on purpose.

_ ‘… Will he hurt me? Inside the wards?’ _

_ ‘Not on purpose.’ _ Which doesn’t mean Andrew won’t just go crazy and bite his head off on _accident_. Great.

He picks a place at random, pulls his white chalk pencil from his pocket and starts drawing the sigils on grass leaves and small rocks and every patch of earth he finds. The symbols are small enough that when he gets up they just look like white dots, and it takes him a while to finish everything but the entryway. By the time he’s done, the moon is high up and huge, and the rest of the pack is already almost there. Andrew is sitting in the middle of the clearing, watching the trees around them, and it’s only because of his cues that Neil knows where to look.

The first ones to arrive are Matt and Dan. He's surprised to find out they are almost the same size as wolves, though Dan is leaner. They both approach Neil first, an unspoken agreement. She rubs on his legs like a cat, her eyes round and kind, and he bends to let her press her nose to his cheek. He can hear her voice inside his head, saying _ “hello, tiny friend witch” _ but when she steps away it quietens to a pleasing hum.

Matt waits until he straightens before rising too, putting his two front paws on Neil's shoulders to press his head to Neil's face. His voice is louder, clearer, as he says _ “Neil friend witch let's hunt run play together”. _It's a very weird moment: Neil starts to protest, gets fur in his mouth, sputters, then reaches out to pet Matt because it's the easiest way to make him stop. When Matt drops down a moment later, he's rumbling deep in his chest – laughing Neil realizes – tail wagging. He trots towards Dan, who his lying on her side close to Andrew, and drops down next to her, his head a foot or so away from Andrew's bare feet.

Neil watches them stare at Andrew – who’s ignoring them – until the next group arrives: Renee, Allison, and Seth. They come into the clearing making enough noise to startle most of the wildlife around them, with Seth and Allison bumping and pushing each other and Renee around. Seth's version of greeting Neil is brushing his full body past his side and almost making him fall before, surprisingly enough, joining Dan and Matt on their now-forming circle around Andrew.

Allison pushes her head into his stomach with more strength than necessary – “_ hey asshole” _ – and only tolerates a few scratches behind her ear before leaving to greet the others. He watches her settle next to Seth then turns to see Renee watching him. Neil, who still finds her very unnerving, is surprised when she takes a small step towards him and tips her head, half an offering, half a question. He hesitates for a long moment before reaching out to touch the top of her head, letting her press her nose to his arm, her voice whispering _ “thank you for coming” _.

The contact only lasts for a second before she leaves him and approaches Andrew, ignoring the others. She drops to the ground close to his hand and sniffs at it until he pushes her away with a glare. Renee puts the tip of her tongue out, snorts and wags her tail when Andrew growls, and backs away towards Dan and Matt to greet them.

With five of them here the circle around Andrew is almost completed. Neil can't help thinking this is the funniest show of support he's ever seen, but he also knows Andrew wouldn't have allowed anything else. A wolf howls somewhere close by, and all of the pack answers. A moment later Abby comes into view, small and lean, followed by both Kevin and Wymack, still human and fully clothed. She wags her tail and presses her head against Neil's hand – “_ witch child pack mine ours Neil” _ – but doesn't linger.

Wymack stays away, mindful of Neil's boundaries despite clearly wanting to touch as much as the others. Kevin, who has the subtlety of an ox, reaches out to hold Neil's head between his hands and presses their foreheads together before he can protest.

"Kevin—" Neil tries, but is interrupted by Kevin's hushed words.

"Be careful. For your sake as well as his." Is all he says before letting go.

Wymack just nods "What he said. Also, good luck, kid." He _turns _then, clothes ripping, and approaches the others, sitting himself behind Andrew. He is, Neil deduces, one of the only packmates Andrew would allow at his back. Kevin, still human, sits at Andrew's other side, but remains silent.

They must be impatient, wanting to run and hunt, but all of them wait together for Neil to say “It’s time.” Every head turns towards him then, their synchrony still as unnerving as before. Kevin says nothing even as Andrew gets up and leaves their circle and follows Neil to the unfinished wards. He turns to call Andrew, who is still standing, bare feet touching some of the sigils near the opening, his face unreadable. This isn’t supposed to be easy, there are still so many variables, and Neil knows this. He’s accepted it. 

“I’m not afraid,” he tells Andrew, and forces his heart to cooperate and stay steady. There are many variables, but he won’t let himself become one of them. “You won’t hurt me. You won’t go feral. You won’t become an Omega, Andrew. I’m sure this” and he doesn’t need to point at the pack watching over them for Andrew to understand what he means “will be enough to keep you from drifting. I’ve told you once before and I’ll tell you again, these wards will not hold unless you say yes. Do you still want to do this?”

Andrew breathes in deep, hands clenching and unclenching on his sides, eyes shining bright with the pull of the moon. But he does step into the wards, one foot after the other, watching as Neil kneels down and draws the last symbols. The wards stay quiet and lifeless, and that must be enough proof for him because Andrew finally says “Yes.” and the sigils flash brightly for a second before settling.

He feels it, the moment the ward comes up. Like the wards Neil kept around himself, it dampens the bond until it’s nothing but a background hum, easily ignorable. The wind still blows through it, and it doesn’t block their smells or anything like that, but Neil knows it feels like a solid wall when Andrew reaches a hand out to check the boundaries.

Every single wolf in the clearing is watching them, eyes flashing orange and red under the moonlight. Andrew’s eyes are closed, his whole body strung up so tight Neil can actually see his muscles shifting under skin. He’d refused to take his clothes off, and not even Kevin had argued about it.

Inside his head, the countdown ticks away the last seconds before midnight, and as it reaches zero, Andrew gives in to his wolf.

The process isn’t pretty. It’s not even a little bit romantic. There’s the sound of bones cracking, and growls of _pain _and _anger _and _f__ear _and there’s fur and claws and fangs and paws where there were hands and feet, and Neil can’t help but try to make himself as small as possible because Andrew is _huge_. Not as big as Kevin, sure, but still bigger than the others. He’s big and sand-colored, and when he opens his eyes they shine bright and orange, and there’s not a hint of recognition in them. As a wolf, Andrew Minyard looks five seconds from attacking anyone that gets too close. Neil, who happens to be the only viable target, notices it a fraction of a second before he gets pounced. There's no time for warnings, no time for him to defend himself or break the wards, nothing. The beast throws its massive body into him and pushes him down, his two huge paws on Neil's chest, claws digging into flesh, drawing blood, and he can't _breathe_, he can't cast, he can't think straight because there's a voice inside his head that is not his own, screaming _ it hurts i can't stop can't think can't control this i can’t control this— i can’t— no no no— he came and he took _ everything _ he took _ me _ away from _ myself _ and i didn’t ask for this i didn’t want it this is not _ me _ i am not _ this _ i can’t— I— can’t— danger danger danger— bite bite bite— _

"It's Neil! Andrew, it's just me!" Neil tries to scream, but there's just not enough air and it doesn't matter because the wolf isn't listening. He throws his hands up, then freezes them a hair's breadth away from his paws, the rows of teeth right above his throat enough of a reason to keep him still. Andrew growls and his whole body shakes with it. He keeps repeating "Andrew. It's okay. You’re safe. You’re okay. It’s over, Andrew, you did it, it’s okay." The wolf bares his teeth and growls until he drops his hands onto the earth, a show of trust he doesn’t actually feel. Andrew presses down hard enough to hurt, voice still loud and confused in Neil’s head, but after a moment he moves from his chest with a final warning growl, leaving him on the ground to cough and breathe as he paces the wards' limits like a caged beast.

The other wolves whine and bark and scratch, eager to touch and smell, worried about their newest wolf and witch. Andrew watches with his teeth bared, looking ready for a fight. When none of them manage to break into the circle he crouches low in the grass, careful and suspicious.

Neil waits until there are no more screams inside his head before he sits up. The others have gathered mostly on his side of the ward, whining at him until he mutters “I’m fine, he didn’t hurt me.” They clearly don’t believe him, and there are holes on his shirt and probably blood staining it, but there’s nothing they can do and Neil has more pressing matters at hand right now. He turns back and tells Andrew. "I’ll keep the wards up until you give me the okay." Andrew flicks his ear at him, but doesn't react otherwise; he might be keeping an eye on the pack, but his ears are turned towards Neil, and it's enough to keep him talking, voice soothing and quiet. "The first time is a little scar—" the wolf growls "_ loud_. I guess. And painful too. But the run is worth it. It'll be easier, after you join the full moons. They'll understand you better, your boundaries too. Or at least try." Andrew stops staring at the pack for long enough to get up and go back to Neil's side, settling an arm or so away from him, the message very clear. He is quiet, now, still there and still wary, but no longer in panic. He is also very determined _not _to join the others. "Or you could just stay in here. That’s fine."

The others' complaints become louder when they hear that last part. Even Seth's head shows up besides Allison's white and grey one, their eyes staring straight at Neil.

It's not just Andrew they want out of the wards, and it surprises Neil, that they want him to join their run, that they want to touch him and mark him as theirs. Their almost silent voices whisper _witch witch witch _and _tiny angry wolf brother pack friend child mine mine mine _— their words settling like heavy weights on Neil's shoulders, but still, he tells them to "Go and have fun. It’s okay. We'll just watch this time."

One by one they leave, huffing and grumbling under their breaths, until only Kevin's huge body is pressing close to the wards, clearly wanting to be let inside. "Fuck off, Kevin." He says, but only gets a growl. Andrew growls back. Neil shoos him twice more but is completely ignored.

Kevin only has eyes for Andrew, as if willing him to come over. It doesn't happen. They are both stubborn, but Andrew is also untouchable right now, and nothing will make him move if he doesn't want to. After a while, even Kevin gives up and leaves, unable to resist joining the hunting howls.

Now that he’s calmed down a little, and the wolves aren’t around to bother him, Andrew busies himself with taking stock of all the differences between his human form and this one. He gets up and arches his back, sniffs at his paws as if to check if they’re real, sits back down and rolls around the grass before settling in a comfortable position.

The cat says _ ‘I’m coming out, warn him’_, and the moment Neil does so it jumps out of his skin and into the grass. Wolf and cat stare at each other, a rematch of their meeting all those days ago, but this time it’s Andrew who gives in first, turning away to look out towards where the pack’s howls can be heard. The cat takes it for the permission it is and approaches Andrew, purring ridiculously loud as it bumps against his side, rubbing its head on Andrew’s cheeks before climbing him just so it can groom behind his ears. “You’re being rather undignified today.”

_ ‘It’s a special occasion.’ _ The wolf huffs and shakes his head, trying to dislodge it. If it were a common cat it’d had worked, probably, but this one is ink and magic and no matter what Andrew does it’ll keep doing as it likes. Andrew probably notices that, too, because he quickly gives up and goes back to watching the trees.

Neil grows bored quickly from sitting still and trying to see anything with how dark it is. Sometimes they hear the wolves howling, but there’s no way no know if they got something or not. Instead of worrying about it Neil buries his hands into the dirt and closes his eyes, dives deep into root after root, listens to the forest as it whispers of paws on the ground and voices in the wind, chasing a squirrel, a mice, a family of raccoons that they all decide to leave alone as soon as they find the mother. The park they are at isn’t big enough for any wild hogs to live in, so they end up playing around more than hunting.

When they start circling back towards the clearing, Neil comes back to himself slowly, first feeling his fingers, then his arms, leaving the flow of magic always harder than staying as a part of it. The cat is now lying beside him, it’s phantom weight against his leg a grounding reminder of his own body, and he’s not really surprised to see Andrew, fully dressed and sitting in the exact same spot he was as a wolf, staring straight at Neil. When their eyes meet, though, it’s the wolf who looks away first.

“They’re coming back,” Neil tells the cat, and it lets him pick it up easily, but asks Neil to tell Andrew _ ‘Told you it’s fine’ _ after it gets back into his skin. “…It asked me to tell you _ ‘Told you’_? And _ ‘it’s fine’_. Why?”

Andrew rolls his eyes, but doesn’t look at Neil as he answers “Your cat is borrowing some of your catchphrases.” He looks tired, like this night took something from him.

Neil tries very hard _not _to think of what he’s heard. Sometimes the bond feels like a breach of privacy, and this is one of those times. The moon is already going down, but for some wolves – especially turned wolves – turning back into a human is harder, because of the emotions, and after everything, even though he knows nothing will come off it, Neil can’t help but ask “Are you alright?”

He can see Andrew’s jawbone moving, and he turns to stare at Neil like he has something to say but can’t find a way to say it, more emotional than he’s ever seen him. A wolf’s howl nearby is what sets him off, each word sounding like it was forced out: "I don't want them inside my head."

It's not what he'd expected, but considering the little he knows of Andrew, it's a pretty reasonable request. Neil still doesn’t want to do it. The pack is fast approaching, though, and when they find out it's going to be loud.

"You said you didn't want me using my magic on you, either." He tries to deflect.

"And yet here we are. Can you keep them out?"

If the bond is as overwhelming for him as it was for Neil, it must be hard getting used to it. But ever since coming here Neil hasn’t actually heard or felt anything distinctively from Andrew, so he must be blocking or at least dampening his own side of the bond. If that’s the case it’ll probably be easy for him to learn how to block them by himself, with time. A temporary solution it is, then.

"I'll need my things. I can’t exactly write on you with chalk. Can you handle them until we get back? I'm pretty sure not everything gets through. It's mostly strong feelings or thoughts." Andrew glares at him. "What? I'll do it as soon as we get back."

There’s noise nearby, so Andrew nods.

A moment after, the clearing is filled with wolves jumping and bumping into each other, dirty and, in Matt’s and Allison’s case, soaked for some reason. Kevin looks the happier Neil’s seen him since he came here, roughhousing with Dan and Renee at the same time, nipping at Wymack’s tail and jumping away, and Neil can’t help but think of the skinny boy that took care of him _ (Kevin saying ‘I’ll be your alpha one day’, Kevin saying ‘We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to’, Kevin saying ‘Just a little bit longer, Nate, just a little bit—’ a mantra of sorts, their spell for a better future. Repeat it enough times and it will be real) _ the alpha approaches them, presses his nose to the ward, a silent request to be let in. He’s looking at Andrew, though, so Neil waits for him to give his okay before reaching out and wiping the sigils in a few of the grass leaves. It takes him a moment to adjust to having all the wolves inside his head again, calling him and coming over to smell him and check if he’s still in one piece.

“I stayed right here the whole time, I’m _ fine _ .” He knows why they are so afraid, and it’s not like he can blame them, considering the eight patches of blood now drying on his shirt, but Neil is already healing, not as fast as wolves do but still pretty fast, and he did what was asked of him, and Andrew might not be in _ complete _ control, but he’s getting there. He is, by most parameters, perfectly fine.

The wolves disagree, of course. They think _neil neil neil pack pack pack_, and it feels like the truth. They circle him, nip at his fingers and lick at the drying blood as if it’ll help the healing wound somehow. Matt drapes himself all over Neil’s back, and Seth throws himself on top of his legs, tail wagging; he feels somehow more human as a wolf – his thoughts more focused and clear, at least. The others come and go, pressing against his back and sides, asking for pets and scratches and licking him as thanks. He forgets, for a moment, of how this evening had begun.

When he remembers, Neil turns to check on Andrew. He has Kevin’s big head right beside his tight, one of his hands resting behind the alpha’s ear. Kevin looks like he has no intention of moving, and Andrew doesn’t seem to mind the touch, for once.

Neil looks at the both of them, the eye of a hurricane of noise and movement, and thinks _ Oh_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Andrew's transformation was one of the first scenes I wrote, and it was one of the most rewritten scenes in this entire fic! Every time I realized something new to his character that should've been included, or something Neil should take notice of, or something the others should express. I didn't give everyone's fur colors away because I'd forget it and get it confused and the least details the best, so HEY, FEEL FREE TO TELL ME WHAT COLORS YOU THINK THE FOX FAMILY'S FUR SHOULD BE AS WEREWOLVES!  
Feel free to come and talk/chat/yell/cuss at me on tumblr (belladonna-queen)!


	7. wolves and ravens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I'm sorry for the delay, college is trying to kill me two months before I'm set to graduate, and then I had the very stupid idea of adding shit to this chapter lol  
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, I'm pretty sure this is the biggest chapter yet.  
Oh, there are trigger warnings for flashbacks and violence at the end of the chapter (right after “It’s the Ravens.”), it's really brief but if you're worried I'd ask you to come and talk to me about what you can't miss.

“There are temporary tattoos”, Neil explains when they get back to the house. “It’s kind of like the henna ink, and it’ll last you a week or so.” The others are all down on the basement, and they apparently intend to sleep there, just piling all around the floor despite the perfectly useable beds up here. Andrew followed behind Neil when he went to get his bag, and since they’re both here already, Neil just sits on the ground of his room and starts preparing his tools. “If you still feel like it’s necessary after that, we can just redo it.” When he looks up, Andrew is still fully dressed and staring at Neil’s materials like they’re torture devices. “Where can I draw it?”

The wolf looks up sharply, surprised by the question. Neil wonders if he thought he’d give him a charm or something equally silly, but the next moment Andrew pushes the sleeves of his long-sleeved shirt up, exposing rows and rows of scars. It’s a jarring sight, not for itself – Neil’s whole body bears scars from his father and the years on the run, his lightning tattoo the biggest of them –, but because wolves _ don’t scar _ . Or at least they _ shouldn’t _, unless it’s a magical wound, or if they’re weakened, or of it was repeatedly opened until not even his fast healing could close it correctly. For Andrew to have this many—

“Past moons,” Andrew says, and his voice is emotionless as usual, but Neil can _ see _ how much he’s struggling to keep it that way. He reaches, not for Andrew but for his own shirt, pulling down its collar until most of the lightning scarring effect is showing. 

“This was my father’s last birthday gift to me. It hurt like hell and doesn’t even _ work _ as it should.” He tries for light and funny but can’t really deliver it. Instead, he lets Andrew look his fill before letting go and adjusting the collar so the scar doesn’t show anymore. At least now it feels like they’re even. “I can’t do this without touching you.”

Andrew needs a long moment before he nods. “I know.”

“Listen, it’ll take me half an hour at most. I’ll draw the symbols on you with this pen” he picks up the ballpoint pen, showing it to him “because if I make a mistake I can just wipe it. Then I’ll do the same using the ink, add the magic along with it. It’s nothing like getting a tattoo, no pain nor scratching. It’s safe.”

“Okay.”

“You sure?” Neil frowns, trying to get a read of him.

“_Yes _. I’m sure.”

“Fine. Let’s get to work then.”

Neil takes care to explain each sigil as he writes them, lets Andrew see the lines and curves, holds his wrist loosely and twists it around gently, drawing as fast he can without making mistakes. Andrew asks questions about cultures and languages, some of which Neil had never even thought about, and together they fill the silence until it becomes less unbearable.

Then he picks up the ink and they both stay quiet so Neil can concentrate, adding magic and meaning to each of the symbols as he slowly fills them with ink. He waits for each sigil to gleam and settle before moving to the next one, trying to go as fast as possible.

When it’s done, he teaches Andrew how to control it, moving his hands through the air and using his own wrist to explain, so as not to touch him, trying to ignore the lingering feeling of heat on his hand.

.

Kevin doesn’t react well to the tattoo, despite Neil making it clear it’s temporary. When he finds out what Neil and Andrew had been doing while the rest of them slept, he gives them a lecture about unity and trust and, when that doesn’t work, moves on to shouting about unfairness and pettiness. Since Andrew remains unmoved, he takes it out on Neil instead. 

“You shouldn’t have done it. Or you should at least have _ asked _ me.”

“He told me to do it, though.”

“It wasn’t just _ his _ decision.”

“Why? Because you’re an alpha and you don’t want it? I assumed he had a _ choice _.”

“We were making _ progress _—”

“Shut up, Kevin,” Andrew speaks for the first time, and it has the intended effect: Kevin does shut up, throwing his hand in the air and walking away. Neil tries to go after him and diffuse the situation a bit, but all he gets is a door slammed to his face.

The whole fight is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. Neil kind of wants to punch Kevin in the face for a while after that.

.

Their childish I’m-not-talking-to-you fight only ends when Kevin gets a call from a West Virginia number. It’s Friday night and the whole pack is allegedly watching Game of Thrones, although Neil is just doing his homework near them and both Seth and Allison are too busy with each other to pay attention to the TV. Kevin is sitting next to Dan and Andrew is on a beanbag beside Renee, but the moment he hears Kevin’s strangled _ “No” _, he’s beside him.

Dan has a hand on her alpha’s shoulder, and she’s the one to tell the others “It’s him.”

The whole room goes tense. Neil doesn’t move from where he is, but he does say “Don’t pick up. He’s trying to intimidate you.” Some of them growl, but Andrew just takes the phone from Kevin’s hand and puts it on speaker when he accepts the call.

“Who is this?”

There’s a moment of silence in which Neil hopes it might just be a prank call, then a deep voice says “I want to talk to Kevin.”

A muscle in Andrew’s jaw jumps, but his voice is calm when he answers “Kevin is busy right now, but you can talk to me.”

“I don’t have the time for this bullshit.” The voice growls, and Kevin reaches out for his phone. Neil has a moment to resent him for being so easily threatened, but the voice suddenly comes back, this time in French _ “I know you’re there and you better listen, Day. Riko is going your way. We have been ordered not to aid him, but the—” _

It goes silent. Kevin makes a wounded noise, then growls “Andrew, why—”

“I wasn’t going to let whoever it was threaten you, no matter the language.” He throws the phone on Kevin’s lap and leaves the room.

Kevin, either pissed off or terrified enough, goes after him with a hissed “Don’t you dare turn your back on me _ now. _”

Neil follows, of course, but pauses to ask Dan “Warn Wymack someone called.” When he’s almost out of the house he adds “Not Riko.” Before hurrying to catch up to the other two. When he gets to the garage, however, Andrew’s care is still there. Neil frowns, looks around for a moment, searches for them around the street and finally notices the clothing, ripped to shreds on the sidewalk.

He groans. _ ‘Did anyone see them?’ _

_ ‘No,’ _ the cat answers.

Neil walks over and starts collecting the fabric. A moment later Matt joins him with a plastic bag. “Should we go after them?”

“No. Let them be stupid and get caught, see if I care.” But he does ask the cat to keep an eye out for witnesses.

They come back hours later, both of them dressed in clothes way bigger than them, Andrew especially, and looking calmer, somehow. Wymack is behind them, looking more tired than Neil’s ever seen him. Kevin sends a look his way, clearly expecting a lecture on running around as a wolf again, but Neil is too curious about the call to say anything.

“It wasn’t Riko.” Andrew prompts, arms crossed and glare back in place. It paints a decidedly less threatening image with how ridiculous he looks in those clothes.

“His name is Jean, and he was my— Riko’s witch, during the time we spent in Evermore. I— When Riko— When I left” he finally continues “he was the one who helped me escape. He... stayed. Behind.”

Reading into the lines is easy: I left him there. He thinks, for a moment, of his mother’s words – _ wolves lie, wolves use you, Abram _ – but then he realizes, he’d done the same. When he and Mary ran, they’d left Kevin there, and he hadn’t even put up a fight. He hadn’t even thought of his alpha for years afterwards. There’s guilt in the pit of his stomach, and he takes a moment to bury it before he can ask “What did he want, Kevin?”

“To warn me. Riko is coming.”

Neil knows it’s the truth, but he also knows there must be more to it. “How sweet of him. What did he want?”

“I just said—”

“Was it a threat? Was it a warning? Is he working with us or against us?”

There it is, the small hitch in Kevin’s breath, the second of hesitation before he answers “I don’t know.”

“Liar.”

Kevin flinches. “I don’t—”

“What did they do to him? To make him stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“But they did something.”

“... Yes. He is bound to Riko.”

Neil closes his eyes and breathes in deep. _ That _is the destiny he escaped from, the truth behind his and Kevin’s childhood dreams of being a pack of their own. He needs to think, he needs to decide what to do next. 

“Can we help him?” Renee asks from where she’s sitting.

“No,” says Kevin at the same time Neil says “Maybe.”

Kevin frowns “We have to worry about _ ourselves _ first.”

Neil is up and moving in a second, his own guilt suddenly turning into ice-cold rage. He’s on his alpha’s face in a moment, voice shaking with the barely restrained want to shout “And when Riko comes, Kevin? Will you abandon us and look for your next pack? Are we to protect your cowardly ass with our lives?”

“I won’t run,” Kevin growls, “I’ll protect you.”

“Like you protected Jean?” Kevin flinches, curls into himself like he wants to vanish, and Neil sees how the others are all up and tense, ready to stop him, he sees the look in Wymack’s eyes that screams ‘back-off’, he sees Andrew’s watchful gaze, but he also knows if things stay like this, they won’t be able to move forward. The Kevin he knew was an arrogant teenager, a fighter and a protector. _ This _ Kevin is just a coward. Neil doesn't want him, doesn't need him. “The strength of the pack is the alpha.” He says, echoing of a boy who he’s starting to think might be long dead.

Kevin looks down, shoulders hunched, and Neil thinks this is it. He’s given up before the fight even began.

Andrew says “Kevin.” 

The others all whisper _alpha alpha alpha_.

Through the bond, Kevin feels like an ocean of blue threatening to drown them all.

Neil reaches for him, takes his face between his hands and shakes him a little like Kevin’d done to him many times before. He repeats “The strength of the pack is the alpha.”

“The strength of the alpha is the pack,” Kevin mutters after a long moment. He still looks unsure.

Neil shakes him again.

“Tell me what do you want, Kevin?”

“To stay.” Neil’s tattoos flare, and Kevin must feel it, or maybe he can smell the ozone in the air, because he shivers. His eyes shine with something Neil hasn’t seen in them since they were little. “I want to stay, and I want you beside me.”

Neil lets go of him, takes a step back, and growls “Then fight.”

.

Three days later, Neil comes back from a visit to Abby’s with the girls to find Andrew on the couch of the living room reading a book, the rest of the house quiet and still. "Do you know any tattoo parlors in Columbia?"

Andrew looks up from his book to frown at him. "Yes."

Because Neil knows him, and knows he's still pissed off with Kevin, he politely asks "Can you take me there?" As if it wasn't implied in the first question. And when it doesn't look like Andrew will say yes he adds "I'll buy you ice cream." Andrew very obviously weighs the pros and cons of selling himself for food, but it's Friday and Kevin is still roaming around the house growling at everything and everyone that moves because he's pissy and terrified, and literally everyone else left to Abby's to avoid him, so he's bound to come out of his room anytime now to scream at them. Also, there's ice cream involved. He glares at Neil half-heartedly and gets up from the couch, only stopping to put on his sneakers before they leave the house.

When they're halfway to town Neil takes Andrew’s phone and types a message to Kevin warning him where they went, and gets a broadcast of every emotion on the anger spectrum through the bond before putting up his shield. Andrew's only reaction, when he reads the message, is to snort.

The ice cream shop they go to is called Sweeties. Andrew asks for a ridiculous amount of ice cream and Neil gets a cone of one of the fancy dark chocolate ones. They eat in silence which is perfectly fine by Neil, and by the time he pays and they leave, Andrew is in a significantly better mood than before. The tattoo shop he takes them to is only a few minutes away from Sweeties; it's called Eden's Twilight, and if it weren't for the giant purple neon sign that read Tattoo, Neil would think it was a bar. When he tells Andrew that, he shrugs and says "That's because it is. There's also a club, but it only opens after ten."

The tattoo parlor is on the second floor, behind the bar where Neil assumes the VIP area would be in other clubs. Andrew knows some of the workers by name and all of them greet him with grins. Roland, tattoo artist by day and barman by night – as he introduces himself –, is in the studio, dressing more like a customer than an employee. He greets Andrew with enthusiasm and grins at Neil after eyeing him up and down, asking “What can I do for you?”

“Neil wants a tattoo,” Andrew says, pointing at him. Neil shakes his head, quick to correct any misunderstandings.

“My machine broke, and I don’t know any of the suppliers around here. I was hoping you could give me some tips.” Roland is more than happy to talk to Neil about his own suppliers, even offering him to come to Eden’s and tattoo there as a guest artist.

“Bring me a portfolio and we’ll set you up, bro.” Since there’s no way for him to explain he only tattoos himself, Neil uses college as an excuse not to, but promises to think about it.

They leave Eden’s and Andrew takes them to the closest shop, where Neil buys most of the materials he’ll need, but it’s not until the third shop he actually gets a machine. It’s awkward, doing this with Andrew. His plan was to find a place close to Palmetto and break into it during the night. At least they stay in silence, no questions asked even though it takes him hours to get everything.

When they’re driving back home, Andrew finally gives in to his curiosity “Are you going to get another tattoo?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, I guess. It’s been a long time since I tattooed myself, and I still have to practice before doing it, but that’s the plan.” Andrew nods and focuses back on the busy traffic of rush hour, and Neil thinks that’s the end of it.

He trains on paper, then on oranges before finally moving on to synthetic skin, the motions of the machine familiar, but the grip still slightly awkward. He’d thrown his mother’s machine, together with most of their stuff, away after Seattle, too caught up on his grief to think about usefulness. His mother had done most of his tattoos, following his designs as best as she could, but some of them he’d tattooed himself, the lock and key, the stem of wolfsbane in watercolors right under his ribs – although he did need the cat’s help to get it where he wanted it. It’s been so long since he’s last held a machine. After Mary’s death, he didn’t even draw anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. But now he has a pack that needs him, and a territory to protect. There are more important things than his own persistent grief, and after picking up that pen to help Andrew, the idea of putting it down again feels impossible. More importantly, the more he studies and changes the design around, the more real this feels – like the tattoo is already almost done, like inking is nothing but a formality.

And finally, when he gets permission from Dan to use the basement and sets all the equipment, Andrew strolls down the stairs and sits down in a chair beside him. Neil could make a fuss, ask him why or tell him to leave, but just like the rest of it, his presence _ feels _ right, so he leaves Andrew alone and focuses on sterilizing the table and getting his colors ready and lining up his needles neatly. He checks the two drawings lying a little away from him, places his left arm as comfortably as possible, does the sketch and redoes it, changes angles until it looks as close to the papers as possible, and turns the machine on.

Like a sentient beast, his magic rises inside him at the sound, making every one of his tattoos shiver and move, a harmony of fire and wind and water and thunder. He closes his eyes to center himself, waits for the waves to abate and for the smell of ozone to clear up a little before he presses the needles down onto skin.

Neil is probably one of the only people in the world that finds the sound of a tattooing machine soothing. Despite his bad first experience, he associates it mostly with his mother and the cat, the pain familiar and controllable in a way few things are. He draws the contours in blacks and browns, leaves spaces where the white will come in later, hums under his breath a song of wings and wind and freedom. 

When the lines are done, he stops to change needles and accepts thankfully the bottle of water Andrew gives him. The cat comes out then, claiming to be bored and saying it wants to stretch its legs for a bit, but then it proceeds to request pats from Andrew and take a nap on top of Neil’s reference drawings, and even when Neil goes back to the table it refuses to move; since the lines are done and he’s seen the pictures so many times now it’s become etched in his mind, he lets it be.

The whole room feels electric, and it’s not long before he’s back into it, coloring the first sparrow, then the second. His skin hurts from the process and itches from the amount of magic, and when it’s over he feels spent, resting his head on the table for a few minutes before going through the motions of aftercare, throwing out what has to be thrown out and cleaning his equipment.

After he’s done he goes back to Andrew, hands the arm out for inspection, smiling a bit at the two birds who are now hopping up and down his arm under the plastic wrapper, little heads moving around as they check their surroundings. The wolf holds his wrist and moves his arm around, looking not only at the sparrows but also at the other tattoos in Neil’s bare arm. It makes him feel a little self-conscious, so he starts babbling “They’re pretty discreet, so nobody would question them flying around. There are so many sparrows out there, not even someone looking for watch birds would suspect them. Also, it’s an easy way to keep watch from above, and they can get almost anywhere with a window. ” _ ‘They’re also a great snack’ _. The cat offers from its place on the table. Neil knows for a fact it’s just being jealous. “Only for stupid cats.”

Andrew watches them move around Neil’s arm for a little bit longer before letting go. “Good luck keeping this asshole from eating your prey animals.” He says, then gets up, pets the cat and leaves Neil alone in the basement.

The next day, Neil finds some ointment in the boy’s bathroom, as well as breath-through bandage packs. He snorts but uses them, perfectly okay with pretending he needs them to prevent infections on his magical tattoo. It heals fast and by the end of the first week, the birds are attempting to fly around the scars on his shoulders and reach his torso. By the second week, Neil takes them out and lets them fly freely for as long as they want, only bringing them back in after they get home from patrol.

They watch Kevin’s back and keep Neil updated, their voices quiet and melodic when they report anything amiss. The cat hates them but it does compensate by staying in Andrew’s lap for most of the night, no matter how many times he complains it makes driving harder or tries to shove it away.

When Neil finally shows his tattoos to Kevin, his only comment on the birds is how easily scared they are, and he does complain about the cat’s sass, but overall he just watches them come and go from Neil’s side with interest, and in no time he’s treating them as if they are alive and part of the pack.

Eventually, he does introduce the tattoos to the rest of the pack as well, brings the three out to let the others meet them. The cat, as expected, goes straight to Andrew's lap, but the birds fly around the room before coming back to settle on his shoulders. He explains as quickly as possible the tradition of familiars and the usefulness of watch birds, but the pack has other priorities.

"What are their names?" Matt asks, eyeing the cat like he wants to steal it from Andrew. Renee, beside him, is smiling at Andrew, who ignores her for the sake of petting it.

"They don't have any."

"Why?!" Dan asks looking deeply offended.

Before Neil can answer, he’s interrupted by Allison saying "Oh my god they're so cute I want to squeeze them!" as she makes grabbing motions at the birds.

Both of them look extremely alarmed by that. _ 'Please don't,' _ they say, at the same time the cat pipes in _ 'They're all yours' _.

"Oh my _ gosh_, they talk!"

"I'm using them for patrol, so they have to." Even though he sometimes wishes they didn't. The cat's ongoing fight with the sparrows is getting more annoying by the day.

"Neil, if they're helping you out you should at least give them names."

"They aren't alive, Dan." _ 'Tell that to the poor mice that thing killed last night' _ one of the birds mumbles. Neil ignores it. "They don't actually care about those things."

From the couch, the cat sends him a look _ ‘I beg to differ.’ _ Andrew says "I've sent Nicky a picture, asking for suggestions."

"Why? And who’s Nicky anyway?"

"Because your cat is the most interesting part of you. My cousin."

Matt elbows Kevin hard, probably trying for subtle but failing spectacularly when the alpha hisses “Stop hurting me, I’ve told you they’re not fucking.”

Andrew doesn’t even acknowledge it, but most of the others begin to laugh. Neil looks from Kevin to Andrew to Kevin, frowning. He starts to say “I thought—” but doesn’t finish. What he thought doesn’t matter.

.

Andrew’s alleged cousin Nicky names the cat King Fluffkins.

It’s the most idiotic name he’s ever heard, but for some reason the cat likes it. When he asks it why, it just tells him_ ‘Such fluff, much king’ _. It’s also ridiculously smug now that it’s free to walk around, getting pets any time it wants from anyone it wants.

The birds are named Merry and Pippin, which is another reference Neil doesn’t get and because of it, he ends up suffering through nine hours of movies. At least this time the story is interesting – if still magically incorrect.

Neil tries to ignore the names as much as possible, but the cat refuses to answer to anything except King or King Fluffkins or Baby – by Allison and Allison only. After a while, he has no choice but to accept it, and after he starts calling King by its name, there’s no choice but to call the birds by theirs.

.

School begins. Neil can’t say he’s particularly interested in any of the classes he’s chosen, but with Dan and Matt’s help he creates a schedule that won’t drive him up the wall and will keep most of his early mornings and all his evenings clear so it doesn’t get in the way of the pack. He picks up Intro to Cultural Studies as an elective, thinking of Andrew’s questions and his own experience with living out of the US.

He sleeps during most of his bio classes, goes through the motions with English literature, ignores his classmates no matter how many of them try to ask him for his number. He runs with Seth in the mornings, eats lunch with the pack, goes to his classes in the afternoon, spends his nights on car rides with Andrew and Kevin.

It’s routine. It’s ridiculously ordinary and completely unexpected for someone like him, but it happens time and time again, day after day, until Neil can’t help but _ expect _ it. The feeling is completely bizarre. Neil settles into the bond slowly, and he only notices it much later when he pieces the moments together:

Seth takes him for breakfast after their run, instead of going back to the house, and tells him "I spent a month as a wolf, in Alaska. It took me a week just to remember how to turn back when I realized how long it'd been. Even after I came back, being human felt like wearing a costume. Even when the others accepted me. Even when Wymack promised I could stay with him after college. It’s still difficult, sometimes."

Neil looks up from his coffee to stare at him, taken completely by surprise, and says the first thing that comes to mind "Why did you leave?"

Seth stops eating his pancakes to grin at him. "Because I was an idiot and wanted to prove I could."

"And why are you telling me this?" They aren't particularly close, and it's not like Neil is going to share his own life story too. After a short, awkward silence, Seth shrugs and goes back to his food.

"Because you understand what it's like, going mad." Neil clutches his fork tighter, not agreeing but not denying it either. When he notices he's stopped eating, Seth just snorts. "It's okay. I'm getting better at acting human. You will, too."

.

Dan is waiting for him after one of his classes, a cup of some fancy coffee from her workplace in one hand, and doesn't even wait until they're out of earshot before saying "I'm not sure if I can be Kevin's second."

Neil, who hadn't even realized that was a thing, raises a privacy ward around them before saying "Then tell him to choose someone else."

She huffs out a breath, takes a sip of her coffee then hands it to him. "Here, it's for you. The thing is, I don't think he knows he's choosing me. And I know it'd make sense for him to pick Wymack, who's older, or Andrew, who he's actually close to, but I'm also really fucking happy he picked me instead, you know?"

"No, I really don't. Why are you even telling me this?" He takes a sip of the coffee and grimaces. It's too sweet. Dan sends him a look that somehow conveys both fondness and pity.

"Because you're our witch, stupid. Helping us is part of the job description. Now, what do I do?"

Neil, still trying to process that being a witch apparently means he's a counselor now, says "Do whatever you want. I think Andrew would be a shit second, though, and Wymack is too busy to deal with us all the time."

She walks him to his next class and hugs him before he goes in, taking the now lukewarm coffee from his hands. "Thank you, Neil. I'll fight Kevin for the right to be his second."

"Please don't." He sighs.

Dan grins at him, waves him goodbye. "Oh, don't worry, I'll kick his ass."

He doesn't say that's exactly what he's worried about, but she probably hears it from the bond anyway, because a moment later he can hear her laughter echoing into the classroom.

.

During another full moon, he's sitting under the elder tree with the fairy, watching Kevin's mock-fight against Andrew, who is still getting used to his own body. There's a loud whine from around the corner, and Neil's immediately up and running towards it. Allison appears a moment later, limping, and goes straight to him, pressing her head to his chest and whining down the bond _ “I stepped on glass” _ and “ _ I hurt, make it better” _and Neil doesn't hesitate to crouch down and search each of her paws for any remaining shards, despite Abby showing up a second later as a human and telling him to "Let me see".

"It's fine" he answers, holding the hurt paw between his own hands and whispering a short healing spell. The pain runs through his hands to his arms to his chest all the way down until it vanishes into the earth. "See? You're all set." Abby inspects it anyway, but there's nothing besides a little crusted blood and even if he hadn't healed her, Allison's werewolf metabolism would've at least closed the wound by now.

Abby pats him on the back and turns back into a wolf, and they both run back to join the others, Allison already walking normally. Neil does a perimeter check for anything else that could be dangerous for the wolves before going back to his place under the tree. The fairy is staring at him from her favorite branch, one eyebrow raised.

"What?" He asks, a little defensively.

"You are too soft, little pearl. The next thing you know, they'll ask you to sing them lullabies and tuck them to sleep."

Neil snorts. "They aren't children."

The fairy grumbles something that sounds vaguely like _ "they're acting like it" _ and disappears.

.

Kevin lays his head on his lap, hands playing with the grass leaves of the field they're resting on. Neil is still amazed, sometimes, about the little quirks his alpha carried from his youth – how he couldn’t stay still, for one, always moving; how he had no brain to mouth filter most of the time, for another.

Andrew is taking a nap inside the car, they are all tired after the full moon that weekend, and Neil assumes this will be just another quiet night, but after a moment Kevin mutters "Do you think he's offended?"

Neil can’t help but laugh at his alpha’s frowning face. "I can't read your mind, but I'll guess yes because you have a tendency to annoy people. Just apologize."

Kevin makes an annoyed noise and sits up straight. "I'm perfectly polite, fuck off. I'm talking about Andrew."

It doesn't explain absolutely anything, so Neil just smiles. "I still can't read your mind."

"Why are you like this? Andrew. Dan. Being my second. You think he's offended I didn't choose him?"

“Oh,” Neil says, not entirely surprised. Dan had, despite him hoping she wouldn’t, fought Kevin for her place as his second in command. They'd both come to Neil right after, staining his only pair of sneakers with their blood – nothing too bad, despite how terrifying the fight had been to watch – and whining about who was unnecessarily violent. She'd won, as she told Neil she would. He still can't believe this is what his life has come to. "No, Kevin, I don't think your antisocial best friend is mad at you for choosing someone else to be your second."

He doesn't look very convinced. "It has nothing to do with best friends. I don't regret choosing Dan, but I don't want to jeopardize Andrew's progress nor make him feel rejected or cast aside."

"Kevin, I assure you Andrew couldn't give less shits about being the second. If it's still worrying you, just talk to him."

"It's not that simple, Neil," Kevin answers petulantly, but an hour later, as Neil tries to take a nap in the backseat, he half-listens to him rambling away his worries to Andrew, who waits until his alpha is done before saying

“You can be really stupid sometimes. I don’t even know what being a second means.”

Neil snorts loud enough he can’t even deny his eavesdropping.

.

Neil seeks out Renee himself, mostly because all of the others have noticed by now that she makes him uncomfortable. He offers to treat her for lunch, but she suggests they grab some food and take a walk instead. They end up sitting in one of the campus’ green areas and eating sandwiches with too much sauce.

She admits, “I wasn’t sure if you would come and talk to me” and he goes a little red on the ears.

“I’m sorry if I ignored you. Matt kept telling me to just come and see you, but I—”

“You’re scared of me.” She finishes it for him and he shrugs. “It’s okay, I get it.”

He’s not sure if she does, though, so he tells her “I know you all had your reasons to be suspicious of me when I got here. I just— I could feel you watching.”

Renee, gentle as she is, actually blushes. “I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine. After I found out why… I get it.”

“I’m glad you’ve decided to stay with us, you know? Not many people would.”

Neil doesn’t say it wasn’t exactly a choice, but like with most things these days, he doesn’t have to. Renee smiles at him, and he searches for something else to talk about. “You kind of told me you’d never been in a pack before, either. Is it because you were also changed? Like Andrew?”

She shakes her head. “I was born like this. My parents were werewolves, but they were both involved in some shady business, and I grew up in a mostly human gang. People pay good money for almost-unkillable bodyguards. I don’t really want to go into details, but in the end, I got out and went to live with Stephanie.”

“Your mother.” He says, recognizing the name from the Elder Mother situation. “Is she a werewolf, then?”

“Oh, no. She’s as human as they come. But she knows, and was very understanding of me and my situation. She’s my mother in everything but blood.” Neil watches her smile go small and soft and, for the first time probably, honest around him.

“I’ve heard of packs with human members.” He tells her. “Is that what she was to you?”

“She still is.”

He hums, crumples his food packages and waits for her to do the same with hers; he’s unsure what he’s supposed to say now. This whole witch-turned-counselor thing is starting to feel like a prank, and even though he was the one to seek her out, he still feels like she’s expecting him to say something wise or at least smart. In the end, he settles for “You could invite her to come visit whenever. I’m sure the others would like to meet the rest of your pack.”

Renee gives him a bright smile and reaches out to press a hand to his back, the touch short and mindful of his boundaries even though he’s pretty sure no one else thinks of those nowadays. “Thank you, Neil,” She says, and he can tell she’s holding back from hugging him. “I think you’re doing an amazing job as our witch.”

Neil smiles back at her, small and honest for once, too.

.

Somewhere around Halloween, Andrew asks him a favor.

"You want _ me _ and _ Kevin _ to go with you and your family to a shopping mall? _ Why? _"

Andrew, who is still pretending to be busy with his cellphone, sends him an annoyed look before answering. "Nicky won't stop bothering me. He wants to meet my friends. _ You _ at least know how to act human and Kevin knows not to answer his questions." The _ ‘hopefully’ _ goes unsaid. 

From the bean bag where he’s sitting, Kevin lets out a disgusted noise. "But I don't _ want _ to meet your cousin. He’s not pack, he’s just human. You already have us anyway, why would you need him?"

“Shut up, Kevin,” Seth says, passing by the living room and into the kitchen. He most likely has no idea what the context is, but Neil quietly agrees. Kevin growls but doesn’t make any moves to go after Seth.

"Didn't ask if you wanted," Andrew answers, then frowns when his phone makes a weirdly dejected sound.

"This is a bad idea," Neil says, knowing he won't be heard.

Andrew sends him a look that could've been threatening if he weren't five seconds away from becoming one with the sofa. The whole interaction feels like a bad dream. "Didn't ask you. Tomorrow at four. Don't be late.”

"We live together!" Neil reminds him, exasperated, "You’ll take us there!"

"At four." Andrew insists.

.

They're late.

It's Kevin's fault for staying too long in the gym, and Andrew threatens to rip him apart if Nicky annoys him because of it. Luckily for Kevin, the infamous cousin isn’t the kind of person who complains, and he only pays attention to Andrew long enough to try and fail to hug him before hounding on them.

"So you're Andrew’s friends! Honestly, I thought he was lying to get away from—"

"They're not my friends. We live together. There’s a difference." Neil nods and pinches Kevin's elbow when it looks like he's going to say something stupid. That earns him a very annoyed look he chooses to ignore.

"I'm Neil." He offers when Andrew doesn't. "And this is Kevin. We’re part of the same fraternity. It’s a pleasure to meet you."

The story they’re going with is that the pack is a college fraternity and they all got recruited during their first week in college. Neil still thinks it’s ridiculous the things people will believe in – Andrew in a fraternity being right at the top of the list – just to deny magic and werewolves exist.

"Oh, you’re the guy who owns King Fluffkins! I need more photos _ asap _ .” Nicky says and hugs him. The cat purrs inside his head, and Neil suddenly remembers he has a _ grudge _ against this person. Also, he doesn’t know what _ ‘asap’ _ means. Nicky hugs Kevin again and holds him in place for a moment when he steps back, looking him up and down. “Are all of you this hot? Are any of you single? Oh my god, are any of you _ gay _?"

"Wolves don't have sexual pref—" Neil pinches him again. Kevin growls.

"Wolves? Is that a fraternity thing?"

"Yeah, sure." Neil agrees. "We’re a wolf pack. So, Nicky, are you in college too?"

"Oh no, I'm just visiting. I live in Germany."

"Isn't it a weird time for vacations?"

"I'm new at work, so there's no way they'll give me the good weeks.” Nicky laughs, pats Neil on the shoulder. “Not complaining though, it's been a while. I missed my fa— my cousins."

Neil doubts anyone would miss Andrew, but maybe distance makes him less— no, there's no way he's nicer by phone. Nicky is just weird.

"You're weird," Kevin informs him, then steps away from Neil before he can get pinched again.

"And you're rude." Andrew interferes, speaking for the first time. "Can we get food now?"

They all start walking towards the food plaza, Nicky excitedly talking the whole time about people Neil doesn’t know and doesn’t care about, Andrew walking beside him not even pretending to listen. For some miracle, Kevin hears him say something about some boring historical building and they talk about that for a while. Once they’re all settled – both wolves with enough food for three people – the conversation circles back to school.

"So, you told me earlier you call yourselves wolves.” He smiles at Andrew, and when his cousin doesn’t engage turns to Neil. “Does that mean newcomers are puppies? Did you call Andrew a puppy? Oh, was there an initiation? How did you convince him to go through it?"

Neil hesitates for a moment before saying “My initiation was touching a cursed tree. I don’t know about Andrew, though.”

“So, was it cursed?”

You have no idea. “Not really. Or, at least I haven’t died yet.”

“What about you, Kevin, what was your initiation?”

“I was born into it.”

_ ‘Oh,’ _ Neil thinks, _ ‘this is going to be a disaster.’ _ King snorts. “What he means is that he’s a legacy and didn’t have to deal with any pranks.”

“Also, he arrived in the middle of the school term so everyone kind of ignored him.” Andrew supplies. “He’s as much of a puppy as I am.”

If Nicky realizes Kevin’s death glares, or the amount of double talk going on around him, he doesn’t acknowledge it. "Oh, you didn’t answer me earlier, Neil, are you a wolf too? Or are you still a puppy?"

Kevin, at this point too annoyed to think straight – or maybe just offended at the idea of Neil as a werewolf –, answers quickly "No, he's our witch."

"You mean wizard.” Nicky corrects him kindly at the same time Andrew kicks Kevin under the table and tells him to _ shut up _ through the bond. That he’s using it at all indicates how well this conversation is going. “Are you wiccan or something, Neil?"

“What? _ No _.” And Neil’s about to tell him how wrong wiccans – and most other religions, really – are about magic when Andrew interrupts him.

“Do you want to see photos of King?” And just like that Nicky’s distracted.

Nicky stays for a week, and Andrew drags Kevin and sometimes Neil with them around the city. He learns that Andrew worked at Eden’s Twilight and Nicky had three jobs to keep him and the twins fed. He learns Andrew _ has a twin _, who not only looks just like him but goes to the same university as him and he’s never seen them both together because Aaron – twin number two – refuses to see his brother for some reason. Neil doesn’t particularly care. He’s more interested in how, when he’s with Nicky, Andrew is different. He talks more and tells his cousin when he’s overdoing it or when he should shut up. He even expresses himself more, even if it’s just to roll his eyes or send death glares or snort when Nicky says something particularly obnoxious. It’s fascinating to watch.

Even _ King _ is absolutely in love with Nicky, although it’s mostly because Nicky showers it with treats it doesn’t need and toys it won’t even play with. _ ‘It’s the thought that counts’ _ it explains when he points it out. The others seem to like Andrew’s cousin as well, and when it’s time for him to go they all take him to the airport together. It makes Neil think they’d probably be equally dramatic if _ he _ left, and _ that _is a thought that leaves him warm.

.

When winter arrives, the Elder Mother tells him a story. "Once upon a time there was a girl. Her parents had brought her from an island when the hunger became too great. This girl was born with immense power, but she didn't know that. One day, a monster came and made her into something she didn't know, didn't understand. It was years before she understood, and by then the monsters wanted her to be their queen. Only one monster, a boy who was also transformed into something he didn't understand, loved her for what she was, instead of what he wanted her to be. All magic leaves a trace. Their magic became life, a small boy with fire in his eyes and goodness in his heart. This is a fairy's tale. Are you listening, little pearl?"

"I am," Neil whispers.

But she shakes her head. "No, you are not. Listen. When the monsters came for her, she was already half-expecting it. Turned-wolves understand the concept of mortality better than born-wolves do. Her child did not understand this. He was spared not out of pity or mercifulness, but out of a sense of practicality. And yet, his mother's fierceness lived on inside him. Do you understand, little one?"

"I know," he says, but the fairy persists, voice quiet but firm.

"No, _ listen _."

When he looks up Kevin is laughing, in his human form, under Wymack and Dan as wolves. They were supposed to be teaching the others how to defend themselves against hunters, but now it looks more like a game of how many times they can bury Kevin in the snow. Neil grins as his alpha kicks Dan away and wraps is arms around Wymack's middle, wrestling with him despite the others' complaints about hunters simply not having that kind of strength. Even Abby is laughing, despite her pacifistic nature.

Inside his head, he hears the wolves sing _ alpha alpha alpha_, _ love love love_, and, under it all, almost too quiet for him to even make out, _ father father father_.

The Elder Mother watches his face change from confusion into shock into understanding, and she repeats "All magic leaves a trace."

.

Neil doesn’t talk to anyone about it. There's nothing he could say that would make it better, and there's nothing he could do that would fix what's happened.

Some secrets are better left untold.

.

Three weeks before Christmas, Neil opens their front door and finds a skull.

A wolf skull.

When he sees it, Seth curses and calls the others down, and there are people moving around him and King checks and rechecks the wards and talks to the others, but Neil. Neil looks and looks and looks at it, at how clean it is, at the meticulous little scratch that’s on its forehead. If you look at it just so, it kind of looks like a—

“Earth to the wizard of Oz— c’mon Neil, look at me.” Andrew’s suddenly blocking his sight of it, standing right in front of him with both hands half-raised. He looks ready to shake Neil back into reality. It kind of works – he can hear Dan speaking with Wymack on the phone, and Allison and Seth whispering among themselves about the chances of it being a werewolf skull. He can faintly hear the sparrows, both of them doing a perimeter check for anything else suspicious, but it all halts when he hears Kevin’s shaking voice saying “It’s the Ravens.”

And Neil spirals.

_ (He remembers being six and his father teaching him the best ways to butcher a hog. He remembers crying and saying he didn’t want to and red red red.) _

_ (He remembers his mother’s nails digging into his arm strong enough to draw blood, whispering _don’t look at him don’t speak to him just bow low and stay quiet_, and a big man in an all-black suit coming into the house. He remembers shoes and more shoes passing, until he saw two pairs of tiny ones and there were two boys and they noticed him but his mother clutched tighter so he looked down again.)_

_(He remembers Lola saying “Just throw him there, let’s see if he has magic” as he stared at the violet-eyed Omega now trapped in the jail they had in the basement. She looked angry and scared and lost. She was just a kid, fifteen at most. She kind of reminded him of Kevin. _

_ They threw him in and locked the door behind him. _

_ The wolf attacked, one second a teenage girl, the other a big brown beast of claws and teeth and violence. He burned her until there was nothing but ashes, what felt like hours of screaming and fire strong enough to give him burns that took weeks to heal, and at the end of it he was nothing nothing nothing.) _

He’s there and not there, he steps away from Andrew’s quiet worry and away from Kevin’s own meltdown and away from the house and away from the skull on the porch with its tiny raven imprint and he runs and runs and runs.

_ (His father once told him there was a symbiotic relationship, between ravens and wolves. His father once told him wolves used witches for their powers, and witches used wolves for their protection. His father once told him he would one day be a Raven and he should learn to behave properly until then.) _

When Neil stops, he’s at the tree, and Mary is sitting under it, waiting for him. She smiles and there’s not a hint of his mother in her, and maybe that’s the only reason he approaches instead of running again. “Hello, little pearl. It has been a while.” He looks at her and remembers his mother telling him to keep going no matter what. He looks at her and thinks of the feeling of drowning inside himself and wondering if he, too, would go down screaming. He looks at her and he looks at her and he looks at her and he knows he’s spiraling, he knows this is a very stupid idea, and she’s no longer smiling but frowning, deep and worried, but she doesn’t reach out to him because she understands him – because she’s kind and caring despite her own attempts to prove the contrary –, and she asks him “What happened?”

He looks at his mother and says “Make a deal with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so. Wow. This one was a ride. I'll just comment Nicky's itty bitty tiny little appearance: I know many people were expecting him and Aaron to be important to this story, but I just couldn't make it fit without literally changing who Andrew is as a character. I can't see him letting his brother and cousin be part of what is basically another, way more dangerous, world. So, yeah. Nicky won't show up again, and Aaron's involvement will remain minimal.
> 
> Just one more very important announcement: I think I'll start posting the fic weekly instead of every three days. It's all written and completed, I won't abandon it or anything like that, but I've kind of added things that weren't part of the plan and I need a little time to check if everything is still according to the script! So, I'll see you next week!
> 
> Feel free to come and talk to me on tumblr at belladonna-queen!!!


	8. tethered and bound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: See you all next week!  
My anxiety: lol  
I'm just really, really sorry for how long it took me to get this done; my bad. I hope you guys will still enjoy it!

When he goes back to the house, things have calmed down a bit. He tells them he checked with the Elder Mother and she hadn’t heard anything, and when the sparrows get back they report nothing seems out of place. King goes to Neil the moment he shows up at the door, but it says nothing, just asks him to pick it up and lies on his shoulders purring loudly. Andrew’s watching him intensely from his place by Kevin’s side, looking either worried or mad, clearly having something to say, but he seems willing to wait, so Neil ignores him.

“I’ll have to look into better wards” he begins, wiping away the sweat from his forehead. “The most important one will be setting an alarm. I was thinking of layers. The Elder Mother even suggested— Kevin, are you listening?”

Kevin flinches, but does look up from where he’s slouched on the couch. “Yeah, I— I agree. I think we should just redo the whole thing.”

“No, that would leave us unprotected for who knows how long.” He frowns and finally _ looks _at the alpha, pale and shrunken and still shaking slightly. “Did something happen while I was away?” They all look away from him and no one answers. His heart-rate spikes and he wonders if there was a message in the skull, or if Kevin remembered him, or if— “What’s going on?”

“We talked while you were gone,” Wymack says, even though he looks reluctant to do so. “I— We think it’d be best if—” he sighs “Neil, you should go.”

“Go?” Neil repeats, voice hoarse. “Go where?”

“Away.” That one word seems to pain him. Neil looks around the room, but none of the others will meet his eye except for Andrew, who now Neil can say for sure looks furious. “One Omega we can handle, but this is too much. We can’t ask you to be a part of this. It’d be safer if you just—”

“No.”

“Kid, I don’t think you understand the danger—”

Neil can’t help the laugh that leaves him. Oh, if only he knew. “I understand very well.”

It’s Kevin who tries, this time. He doesn’t even look Neil in the eyes when he says “I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“I made you a promise.”

“You promised me nothing.” He says, but Neil wasn’t talking about after Jean’s call. He was talking about before.

_ (“We can leave this place together, be our own pack.”) _

“Neil, we can’t survive this,” Dan says, the voice of reason as always. She sounds like she’s trying very hard not to cry. “I can’t ask you to die with us.”

“You don’t have to _ ask _ me to stay. I can’t, I _ won’t _ leave you.” Kevin finally looks up, then, and it’s at him Neil looks when he says “I’m bound. You— the pack, you are my tether.” The wounded noise that leaves his alpha breaks his heart. King presses closer to him, and he can hear the wolves whispering _ neil neil neil _, and it’s oh so blue, grief for something not yet lost, and he needs to say it, he need to because staying might mean he’ll die, but leaving... “Leaving you would kill me.”

And Kevin, Kevin gets up and takes Neil’s head between his hands, presses their foreheads together, whispers “I’m sorry” so quietly he almost thinks he’s misheard it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeats, again and again, but Kevin has no reason to apologise. He has every reason to be afraid, of course, but he shouldn’t be _ sorry _ . Because when Nathan comes, he’ll come for _ Neil _.

.

They all sleep together in the living room, a mess of blankets and pillows and half of them turn into wolves and pile around him so Neil gets really hot really quickly. At some point during the night, he dislodges Matt’s head from his shoulder and makes his way around the pack, going for a glass of water in the kitchen. Some of them wake up to check on him, but he quietly assures them he’ll be back soon, and they go back to sleep. He’s not really surprised when Andrew follows him there, though. He just picks up and fills another glass, nudges it towards him until he takes it and leans on the counter, waiting for whatever Andrew has to say. He looks a little like he did after his first moon. Like this is going to take something from him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Vulnerable. Neil isn’t sure if he likes it.

“Why did you leave like that?”

Neil had been waiting for this question the whole time, so he’s only surprised it took one of them so long to ask it. Still, he’s glad it was Andrew. “Because I was terrified.”

“You tried to run.” There’s no judgment in it.

“Yeah.” He can’t help the self-deprecating smile that tugs at his lips. “I failed spectacularly though.”

King says _ ‘you chose to stay and you know it. You could’ve ran before they became too much. You knew it was coming and you accepted it. You want them, why lie and say you didn’t want to?’ _

He doesn’t know how to answer that, focuses on Andrew instead, waits for the question he knows is coming. It’s one of the things he still can’t understand: Andrew has way too much curiosity for someone who claims he doesn’t care.

“You’re staying,” he states. Neil cocks his head, unsure where this is going.

“Yes. Not that it matters much. We’re going to die.”

Andrew doesn’t argue. He looks away from Neil and towards the living room, drinks the rest of his water and places the glass on the counter, and finally asks what he wanted to from the beginning. “How does it feel? Losing a tether?”

“I’ve already told you that.”

“No. You told me what it was like to not have a tether. How did it feel, when you lost her?”

“Why do you want to know?” Neil asks, to try and buy time. Andrew doesn’t answer. He’s still looking at where the others are sleeping, and Neil can’t help but wonder if this is about Kevin. His stomach roils and he convinces himself it’s because of the question, not the thought. He doesn’t want to answer, he’s still tired from this afternoon and staring at his mother’s face for hours makes him feel raw in a way he dislikes, but even though he doesn’t want to, when he opens his mouth the words pour out like a flood “I felt her heart stop. I felt her last breath. I felt her body go cold and rigid under my hands. I felt everything, and I felt like nothing. I felt myself fraying with every second that passed after she died. I thought I had died with her. It took me _two days_ to come back to myself. Then I wished I _had_ died. For the longest time I could still _feel_ her— feel the bond, as if she were just around the corner or just in the other room, and I would calm down for a moment. Then I’d realize she was dead and not...taking a bath or something and it’d kill me all over again. _That’s_ what it was like.” He takes a breath, presses his hands to the kitchen counter to stop them from shaking and hisses venomously at Andrew “Are you satisfied? Is _this_ what you wanted?”

“Ask me your question,” Andrew says instead of answering. He looks serious and calm and Neil knows exactly what he’s waiting for him to ask. There have been enough hints, about his past, for Neil to make an educated guess and ask him something equally hurtful and cruel. He knows exactly why Andrew’s doing this and there’s no way in hell he’ll play into his fucking hands. But Neil is still wired up and furious and he kind of wants to piss Andrew off, so he ignores King’s warnings, ignores his own thoughts that tell him he doesn’t want to know, ignores his own better judgment and says

“Tell me why you care.”

Andrew’s mask shudders and rearranges itself into something akin to mild annoyance.

“I don’t.”

“_ Liar _. Why do you care where I went, Andrew? Why do you keep asking me questions and giving me answers? Why do you keep leaving and coming back? Why are you even here right now?”

And Andrew. Wild, untamed Andrew. Quiet, watchful Andrew. Andrew, who might have Kevin as his tether.

Andrew kisses him.

He takes Neil’s head between his hands and he kisses him. It’s angry and frustrated and Neil can’t think he can’t breathe he doesn’t even understand what is happening his mind full of white static until it’s over and then all he can think is _ why _ and all he can say is

“_ Oh _.”

Andrew’s breathing hard, his hands still buried in Neil’s hair, and when he realizes it he growls and steps back and presses the back of his hand to his lips as if to wipe away the feeling of the kiss. Neil licks his own lips as if to chase it.

“You kissed me,” he says, still a little breathless.

Andrew stares at him, frowning, and says “I shouldn’t have.” Neil’s face falls and he must realize how it sounds because he adds “You’re having a breakdown.”

Neil snorts. “Yeah, I mean, we’re all going to die.” And he’s still angry, he’s still desperate, his hands are still where he left them and they’re shaking for a completely different reason. He wonders, for a moment, if this is some kind of attempt to distract him from this; but that’s just not how Andrew works, not something he’d do, so Neil doesn’t add anything, doesn’t ask him _ why _, just watches him, the small movements of his eyebrows and mouth as tries force his face back to its calm façade. Neil considers reaching out to touch the persistent frown but somehow refrains from doing so.

“Most likely, yes.” Andrew shrugs and looks away. _ Maybe that’s why _, Neil thinks, but it doesn’t seem like something Andrew would do. “We shouldn’t,” he says.

“But we did. Why did you stop?”

“You’re having a breakdown.” He repeats.

“Oh, this? It’s scheduled. It happens once a day at least. It’s nothing new.”

Andrew’s mouth twitches, making Neil realize he’s been staring at it, and he looks away. “Your sense of humor is new.” And, before Neil can think of an answer, he adds “I want to ask you something else.”

“Yes.” Neil says without thinking, and Andrew sends him a mean look.

“Why didn’t you make an emotion your tether? You said it was possible.”

It’s not really a change of subject, all things considered, but Neil’s mind is still on the kiss, so it takes him a moment to process the question and piece together an answer that doesn’t sound overly dramatic. Apparently today is a good day for unveiling deep dark secrets. “I did, for a while.” He doesn’t look away from Andrew as he answers. “The grief was overwhelming, and for a long time it was the only thing that kept me alive and moving. It was what mother would’ve wanted, so it’s what I did. Then it got old. And tiring.”

Andrew thinks about it for a moment, then nods, waiting for Neil to ask his own question. King is practically singing inside his head, loud and delighted and ridiculous _ ‘Ask him to do it again, ask him to do it again’ _

“Oh, shut up. Sorry, not you, it’s King.” He snorts and gives in to his earlier impulse of acting like a little kid “You like me?”

Andrew’s frown is immediately more pronounced. “I hate you.”

“You _ kissed _ me.” They’re all going to die and he’s acting like an idiot but at least he can blame it on the hysterics later. “Okay, sorry, don’t leave.” Andrew glares at him and he tries and fails to control his stupid little grin. “So, if I wanted a redo—”

“Go back to sleep, Harry Potter.” Andrew says as he walks away.

“Oh, is that the one with light shows and magical sticks?” There’s no answer, but there’s also no disgusted side look so Neil counts it as a win.

.

Realizing he kind of wants to make out with Andrew changes nothing. He’s still going to die very soon. He’s still pretty sure his presence is the only reason the Ravens are coming here, which means when the pack dies, it’s on him. He’s still too much of a coward to tell them that. So, it changes nothing. Except it also changes everything.

Andrew, as expected, ignores him for the rest of the week. Neil, who’s too busy working with his dead mother’s doppelganger and his alpha to try and talk to him, doesn’t really mind it much. Merry and Pippin spend most of the time flying all over the territory looking for weak spots and easy-access points.

They build layer after layer, a blanket against ill intentions and warnings about outsiders and magic. If Neil could isolate the entirety of their territory from the outside world, keep people from coming in and going out and even remembering they exist, he would. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have that amount of power, so he focuses what he does have on making the wards as intricate, complex and detailed as possible.

Kevin still does his night patrols, but now every night there are three others joining them. They split in two groups and split the territory in two, each group taking a side, north and south. The first day, Andrew hands Neil a key to his car. After that they don’t even talk – he usually transforms and pretends to nap in the backseat until Neil leaves him and Kevin at their usual drop spot and both wolves run through the edges of the territory looking for anything amiss. 

Renee starts teaching them how to fight. Their mock battles and playing is replaced by actual drills, with Neil using his own magic to demonstrate the different ways with which he could kill them and Renee teaching them how to stop him. He tries his best to keep his tattoos concealed, but with how desperate they are, the only one they don’t find out about during training is his father’s lightning scar. Renee’s a strict instructor, straight to the point and analytical. Her advices on how to hurt Neil help him notice his own weaknesses in ways he hadn’t considered before. It’s all useless, of course, but he doesn’t tell them that.

.

The next skull comes with a gift. Neil wakes up in the middle of the night to his alarm wards blaring inside his head and he jumps out of bed, steps on Seth and almost face-plants on the ground before his mind wakes up fully and he starts looking for his jeans and shoes. A moment later Kevin is slamming the bedroom door open with Andrew in tow.

“Neil, what’s going on?”

“Something came in,” he says, and a second later Seth is shifting behind him and looking for his own clothes. There’s noise upstairs that indicate the girls are also awake and moving.“Go get ready.”

Kevin growls “I won’t fight as a human. Tell me where.”

“South, near the park. Someone call Wymack.”

They move quickly, down the stairs and through the doors, the girls joining them at some point. Neil goes into Andrew’s car and Kevin transforms on the back seat before they even turn the corner. He can hear the moment Wymack and Abby are informed – they are loud inside his head, their voices adding to the pack’s – but he doesn’t pay attention to them as he tries to plan for how bad this can end.

When they’re halfway there, the alarms stop as if they’d never started playing in the first place. Kevin asks _ “Are they gone?” _ and Neil can only shake his head. His ears are still ringing.

“Should we turn around?” Andrew asks, hands tight on the steering wheel.

“It’s going to be another skull,” Neil says, not exactly an answer.

Kevin transforms back and says “They wanted us to know they put it there.”

Neil agrees. They’d stayed in one place, after all. Even so, “We have to check.”

When his alpha doesn’t complain nor disagree, Andrew drives faster.

.

It’s Jean, as Neil finds out when his alpha sees him and shouts his name. Kevin opens the door and runs to him naked, like the idiot he is. Neil is the second one out, waiting until Andrew stops the car before he sends King to look for a trail. Both birds are already checking the perimeter.

As he approaches them, the smell of blood and burning flesh hit him, and he doesn’t have to look to know how bad it is. “He’s alive,” Kevin tells him, but by the look on his face, Neil guesses it won’t be for long.

Neil kneels beside his alpha and reaches out to push the witch onto his back. There’s blood, of course, sticking to his clothes and making it almost impossible to find the wounds, as well as burns, on his arms and neck and face, although Neil knows there must be more under his shirt. For a moment Neil is sure this is his father’s magic, but then he notices the bite marks on Jean’s shoulder, where the sleeves of his shirt were shredded. Another cruelty: Jean isn’t dressed for the weather, with only jeans and a t-shirt, and there’s no way to know if he’s shaking from cold or blood loss. Kevin transforms and lays down beside the man, trying to warm him up. He licks Jean’s head but there’s no reaction. In one of his hands, Jean is holding a small bird skull, cracked in places.

Neil has no idea where to begin, but there’s no time to wait for Abby, so he presses both hands down on the man’s chest and starts singing the first healing chant that comes to mind. Jean’s pain is searing, strong enough to blind Neil as he takes it from him and pushes it into the ground. He focuses on stopping the bleeding and preventing infection, feels every cut that closes on Jean’s skin, feels the broken wrist and ribs but chooses to leave them for someone else, changes the chant from healing to soothing, and he’s still doing it by the time Abby shows up beside him. “I got him, Neil,” she says quietly, “you can let go.” But his body refuses to move, his fingers cold and his legs frozen, and he realizes he gave too much when someone picks him up and carries him away from Jean.

There’s a howl from somewhere in the forest, angry and frustrated, and someone says “Wymack lost his scent,” another one says “We should help him hunt,” someone else says “We need to move him.”

The person holding him says “I’m taking him home,” and his chest rumbles with the words. Andrew. Neil recognizes him by his voice, by the beat of his heart, by the smell of smoke and tobacco on his clothes, by the way he holds Neil close to him.

The others are talking all around them, but Neil feels exhausted from the amount of magic he needed just to keep Jean alive, and none of the voices seem to protest as he’s taken away and into the backseat of a car. He doesn’t really register the trip back, floats in and out of consciousness, but he does wake up when Andrew picks him up again, and stays awake for long enough to press his face to Andrew’s neck before sleep claims him fully.

.

When Neil wakes up, he feels like he was hit by a truck. He has the lingering symptoms of overusing healing spells like an idiot – or at least that’s what his mother called it – and probably hypothermia. His fingers are stiff and they hurt when Neil forces them to open from where they’re clutching Andrew’s shirt. Which is when he realizes he was clutching Andrew’s shirt, of course.

Neil’s lying down on his bed, and Andrew is sitting beside the bed with his back to him. The moment Neil shuffles behind him, he turns around and says “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” he answers and coughs right after because of how dry his throat is. There’s a bottle of water on the ground beside the bed, for nightmare nights, and Neil drinks from it. “Where are the others?”

“Abby and Renee are with the witch. The rest of them are on patrol.” He’s frowning, probably thinking of Kevin walking around alone, and because Neil is still half-asleep he reaches out to press a hand to Andrew’s temple, a clumsy attempt at comfort. Andrew tenses, but doesn’t lean away from the touch.

Neil gives him a lazy smile “Good boy.”

To his credit, Andrew looks like he was already expecting Neil to say something stupid. He shoves his hand away, takes a blanket from somewhere and throws it at Neil’s head. “Sleep,” he says, when Neil settles down again.

“You?”

There’s a moment of hesitation, but Andrew’s voice is sure when he says “I’ll stay.”

.

In the morning, Renee comes for Neil. She knocks on the door and waits for Neil to get dressed and open it for her, before telling him “I need your help.”

“Is Jean stable?”

She hesitates before agreeing “He’s better. Abby is with him. That’s not why I came, though.”

He stops his search for a jacket and turns back to her. "What's wrong?"

"If we don't do something about his bond to Riko, this will be for nothing."

"It's already for nothing—" Andrew tells her at the same time Neil says

"I can't break a bond. I don't think it's possible—"

"I don't need you to break it," Renee says interrupting both of them "I need you to muffle it. When Andrew was inside your wards, we couldn't hear him."

"Riko will still know he's here." Andrew butts in again. "It's useless."

“I want him to think Jean is dead.”

Neil is a bit surprised by how smart it is. "It might work, if he's willing to help. Let's go, I need to talk to him."

"He'll probably be asleep if we go now."

"That's fine, I need time to plan and we'll talk to Wymack before deciding anything."

Renee frowns. "Wymack will say yes."

"Maybe. Or might he decide Jean is a liability."

Neil turns to Andrew "You're not helping. Come with us or go to sleep, but I'm going." Andrew bares his teeth, but turns to put on his own shoes. Five minutes later they're on Andrew's car, and the ride to Abby's is fast and silent.

Jean looks even worse in the morning light, every bandage and cut and bruise more evident now that there’s no blood to hide it. His face looks like it was dragged on asphalt, and the wolf bite will probably take a while longer to heal, but at least some of the smaller hurts are already almost gone – either because of Neil’s healing spells from last night or Jean’s own magic.

Neil reaches out to try and take the swelling away, at least, but Andrew grabs his wrist before he can, looking murderous. “What?”

“You’ve done enough.”

He can’t hold the impatient sound he makes. “I’m fine, Andrew, just let me—”

“Neil,” this time it’s Renee who interrupts him “we all felt it yesterday. It hurts you.”

He’s ready to fight them on this – the pain he felt was inconsequential – but Abby shows up at the door before he can even open his mouth.

"Kevin is downstairs," she says, then nods at Neil. "He wants to talk to you."

Renee just shakes her head when he looks at her, not having any idea what the alpha wants, but Neil can very much guess. "I'll go talk to him. Keep an eye on Jean for me." They both know this is an excuse for Renee to stay out of the conversation – Kevin will most likely say something both cruel and stupid, and Renee is too nice not to be hurt by it – but she just nods.

"I'll warn you if he wakes up."

He skips every other step on his way down, and finds Kevin in the living room with a bottle of vodka on hand, Wymack standing beside him and Abby on the doorway to the kitchen, both of them frowning. When they see Neil, the alpha takes a swing from the bottle.

"How is the witch?" Wymack asks when it becomes clear Kevin won't.

"He'll live." He nods at Abby, who smiles back. He hesitates only for a moment before continuing with "Jean won't be safe here with us."

Kevin snorts. "_ We _aren't safe with him here. He has to go."

"We’re already under attack, Kevin," Wymack says. "Having a runaway witch with us changes nothing."

"It gives them an excuse to get in," the alpha grounds out. "They’ll claim the right to search for him and get a small army inside the territory and kill us for kidnapping him or something equally stupid."

When nobody else disagrees with him, he takes another swing of the bottle.

"So he has to go," Wymack says, and the way he says it sounds like an inconvenience, not a death sentence. "All we have to do is find a place to hide him and ward it to the teeth."

"If it's my magic, I'll have to go alone. None of your smells can be there."

"You will not leave the wards by yourself," Andrew’s voice comes from right beside him and Neil jumps out of his skin, not having noticed how close they are, and he can't help but stare after these words.

"I can hide us both. We don't smell as much as wolves do."

Andrew ignores the quip. "They could smell your magic and trace it back to us, or smell the bond in you. It's useless."

He is surprisingly right. The alternative would be for Neil to hide together with Jean until things calm down, and he cannot— _ will _ not do that. He won't abandon them now. The room is completely quiet for some time. This time, it's Abby who breaks it.

"Wymack, I need you to think. Is there anyone who'd be willing to hide Jean for us?" She sounds desperate, and Neil aches with it. "We know so many people, there must be someone."

"I don't— of course there are people, but to ask them is—" _ a death promise _, he doesn’t finish. Anyone they choose to involve could be considered accomplices.

"There might be someone. A pack, I mean." Even Andrew looks, surprised, towards Kevin. "I don't want to put them at risk, but they can be trusted. They could serve as witness, too. If we time it right we can sneak Jean out and make it look like they're just visiting."

"Who?"

"Jeremy Knox."

Wymack hesitates "I know Rhemman," he says, "but not enough to ask this of him."

But Kevin seems to have regained some of his spine. "They're good. They're big enough and liked enough others would notice if the whole pack got killed because of this. They're not safe, but it's the safest option I can think of."

Abby looks from Kevin to Wymack, looking as surprised as him after this small display of confidence. Neil can relate. There's a sense of pride for how far they've come beating on his chest. He says "I can keep our smell from him, there’s a chance they won’t even be able to claim Jean was here in the first place" and it seems to give Kevin a little more confidence, his voice more certain when he decides

"I'll talk to Jeremy. He'll listen, and if he agrees Rhemman has no reason not to."

.

The next Friday, Andrew goes to fetch Neil from his English literature class. He assumes they’re going to the stadium, or maybe to the house, and there’s going to be a pack meeting about the Rhemann pack at the stadium after dinner, but Andrew just drives them around the campus seemingly aimlessly for a while until he finds a parking spot near a coffee shop.

“I didn’t know you liked coffee,” Neil comments when he realizes where they’re going.

“I don’t,” Andrew says, but gets in anyway.

There are very few people inside, at this time of the day. Most of them are students, as is the cashier. She’s tall and blond and Neil knows she’s a wolf the moment he sees her. There are no alarms going off anywhere and King says nothing, so he assumes this is Katelyn, who he’s heard of twice or thrice before but never met. She sees Andrew and looks very confused for a moment, before she sniffs the air and recognizes him. _ Then _ she looks a little bit afraid.

But Andrew doesn’t acknowledge her, doesn’t even look at the counter. He walks towards one of the tables and sits down without asking. The other guy is paying attention to something on the computer, and it takes him a moment to look up. He’s like a thinner, more tired version of Andrew, a bag that apparently weighs a ton lying on the ground beside him. Neil’s surprised for a moment before he realizes this must be Aaron.

He waits to see if Andrew will say something to him – order him to sit down or ask him for a coffee –, but he doesn’t, so Neil goes to the counter by himself. “Hey, can you get me a large espresso to go?” Katelyn is still looking worriedly at Andrew. “… Do you know them?”

She blinks at him then, as if surprised by his presence. “What? Oh, I’m so sorry. What is your order?”

“Large espresso.” She smiles and nods but doesn’t register it, too busy staring at the conversation behind him. Neil turns to see Andrew’s face go from neutral-cold to neutral-murderous and says “Actually, give me a medium espresso and a large hot chocolate. It’s Neil.” He adds before she asks it.

Katelyn manages to smile a bit as she calls his order, then asks “Do you know Andrew?”

“We live together.”

“Oh, you’re the—”

“Yep.” He tries to give her a friendly smile, but it must fall a bit short because she actually deflates a little.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy with everything I didn’t even greet you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s best if you don’t get too close to us anyway.”

There’s a very loud noise of something slamming closed. And someone shouting. “If you think I’ll give up my course because of your weird cult bullshit—” Neil turns again, and this time Aaron is standing with his computer under one arm and the bag on the other. He doesn’t even finish his phrase, just turns and goes under the counter and through the backdoor. Neil hadn’t realized he works here. Andrew is still sitting on the table, glaring at the space his brother had been occupying – looking murderous.

Neil gets their drinks as fast as possible and tries to hand the hot chocolate to Andrew, who doesn’t even touch it. They need to get out of here. “You tried. Now, let’s go.”

Behind him Katelyn is asking her coworker for a short break, but he’s more worried about the look in Andrew’s eyes when he stands up, and for a moment Neil thinks the reason why Andrew asked him to come is to wipe the memories of the witnesses. After a moment, though, he just turns and leaves the coffee shop.

They sit on the car for a long moment, Andrew holding the wheel like he wants to break it in half and Neil holding both their drinks because he’s not sure where to put them. This isn’t one of their good silences, though, and after another moment of listening to his huffing and puffing, Neil says "It's not your fault, you know. There's a lot we can't say without dragging him down with us. And before you ask I can't put a ward on him without putting a target on his back. But at least he's not completely unpro—"

"Don't." Andrew’s voice is sharp and furious and Neil is honestly worried he'll go full wolf on him – the driver seat is too small and there are people everywhere, so it'd be a disaster. But Andrew just clutches the steering wheel harder and takes deep breaths. The last thing Neil’s expecting is an explanation, but somehow he gets one anyway "I think— he was my tether. After I— when we lived together, taking care of him was what kept me sane. But he wanted out. So when we got into college he went to the dorms and I went to the pack house even though I didn't want to." _ Even though I just wanted to be human _, he doesn't say.

Neil can guess at it, though, because of Kevin and Nicky and Wymack. They say a lot without noticing. Apparently, Andrew didn’t even know he had a twin until he was almost of age. Apparently, his and Aaron’s mother was a horrible woman who died in a very suspicious car accident. Apparently, Andrew's brother blames him for it. Apparently the wolf that turned him was his foster brother. Apparently, he was later hunted and killed as an Omega. It’s not hard to guess Andrew didn’t want to be turned and didn’t ask for any of what came later – or before. He could’ve asked, of course. Andrew knows he must’ve pieced some things together, he’s given Neil opportunities to ask, before. But Neil can’t imagine what it must’ve been like, for him, and he can’t really bring himself to dig into someone else’s past when he’s so cagey about his own. So he focuses on the matter at hand instead. "You tried to get him away because of the threat, right?"

Andrew nods. "I don't know how much of my smell is still on him. I don't even know if they'll only focus on us. But it doesn't matter because he just—"

Neil waits for him to finish, but when he doesn’t, says "He's already given you up. You've gotta let it go before it hurts both of you."

"Shut up, no one asked you." Andrew starts the car and points it towards home.

Neil is still holding his not-so-hot-anymore chocolate; well, they can always heat it at home if they want to. Neil sips his own drink. It tastes disgusting, like lukewarm dirty water. He takes another sip because it was really expensive. Somehow, the taste is still the same, and somehow he’s as disgusted as the first time. "Why did you even bring me anyway?"

Unsurprisingly, there's no answer.

.

It's not until later that week, when they're coming back from patrol for the night, that Neil actually processes the meaning of Andrew saying _ 'was' _ , as in _ 'Aaron was my tether' _. He’d been so sure that his brother wasn’t his tether anymore. It sends a thrill through him, and the moment the car’s parked in front of the house he asks “Andrew, what’s your tether now?”

Kevin, bless him, automatically says “I'm— I have to— do. Things. Bye” and practically jumps from the back seat he’d been napping on. Andrew glares at his alpha’s retreating back and refuses to answer, but stays exactly where he is.

“You said yourself that your brother isn't your tether anymore. So what—”

“It’s none of your business.”

“It is my business, though. You took me with you. Why?” Andrew sends him his murder-glare, but it hasn’t worked on Neil for ages. “You weren’t just checking to see if he smelled like you. You wanted to know if the bond was really gone.” Still no answer. “Was it?”

Andrew works his jaw and forces out a “Yes.”

Neil nods. He’d figured, considering how easy leaving the coffee shop had been, especially with another wolf there – another wolf who apparently had a bond of her own with Aaron. “Did you take me to stop you, if it became too much?”

Andrew shakes his head. He looks away from Neil and he’s frowning as he says “It's you.”

Neil thinks _ that can't be right. I misheard him. I must have misheard him _.

But Andrew repeats it, half growling and still not looking at him. Neil's heartbeat stutters and comes back racing, and he feels like an idiot again when he says “But… How?” in the softest voice. Even as he asks it, he’s rearranging every single one of their interactions to try and fit this new information.

He’d refused to let Neil go away and hide with Jean, he realizes; his argument was valid but it’d felt more personal than that, even then. He’d still kept close to Neil during the full moons, when the others left to run, but Neil’d just assumed it was because he appreciated the quiet. He feels like when Andrew’d kissed him, like the last person to realize something obvious, like it’d been hanging over his head for ages and he’d only noticed because it fell and hit him in the face.

“It’s the damn cat’s fault,” Andrew growls. King, who had blessedly remained quiet until now, tells Neil _ ‘I can assure you it was definitely _ not _ my fault.’ _ He doesn’t even pay attention to what it says. Andrew’s fingers are clawed and digging in deep into the seat, his whole body tense as a string. He looks out of control in a way he hadn’t in ages. “I didn’t know and when I _ did _ know I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t, I just felt it— _ snap _, and I couldn’t stop feeling it and nothing works and its—”

“Overwhelming, I know." Neil isn't quiet. He isn't soft. But he can't help the reverent tone of his voice, the gentleness in it, because he does, he knows, even if he didn't get it before, even if he was too blind to see. _ He knows _. "I know. Look at me, Andrew. Breathe." He does. His eyes are bright orange and there’s too much emotion in him, he’s shaking with it, holding each breath inside before heaving it out, like he’s trying to keep the air inside of himself. Andrew looks like someone one word away from breaking himself or everything else. And Neil thinks he must be an idiot because he reaches out a hand until it's less than an inch away from Andrew's face and says "Can I touch you?”

“I _ hate _you,” the wolf growls, the sound distorted and animalistic.

Neil smiles anyway “I know. It'll help, though. Can I touch you?”

“Yes.”

He presses the palm of his hand to Andrew’s cheek and waits for his breathing to slow down before he reaches out for Andrew's own hand and waits for him to nod before taking it and placing it onto his chest, where his heart is beating loud and clear. There are claws on his fingers, but Neil pays them no mind. Instead, he waits for Andrew to get himself back in control. One of the benefits of knowing—_ this _, is that he now knows he can help, if Andrew lets him. He doesn’t think of the downsides. He keeps his own heartbeat and breathing steady, looks him in the eyes as he waits. When it looks like Andrew’s better, Neil removes his hands from him. He's surprised when Andrew keeps his own on Neil's chest.

They’re staring at each other and it’s not like Neil has any concept for setting the mood, or anything similar, and it feels like the moment is as good as any so he just cocks his head and says “I kind of want to kiss you right now."

Andrew’s whole frame shivers, but he doesn't move from where he is; he just glares and says "You’re an idiot."

"And you hate me, I know. You still want to kiss me, though." Neil raises an eyebrow, daring him to disagree. “Don’t you?” Andrew’s answer is kissing him. 

Neil can’t stop smiling through it, even though he knows it annoys Andrew, and when he leans away, breathing hard, Andrew follows him, reaches out and brings Neil’s mouth back into his own, not a hint of claws where his fingers are threading through Neil’s hair. The moment Andrew licks his lips, Neil opens for him, his own hands clutching the car seat for balance. Andrew kisses and Neil feels every touch like an electric discharge, sending shivers down his spine, and they kiss and they kiss and they kiss and he wishes he didn’t need to breathe, and he wishes Andrew never stops, and he wishes they weren’t in the car because this is getting a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe they could just jump to the backseat. 

But Andrew pulls back a moment later, dark eyes roaming his face and his messy hair, pausing a moment to stare at his lips before he opens the door behind him and leaves the car without looking back. Neil stares after him, takes a long moment to catch his breath, then follows suit.

.

The next morning, there’s another skull waiting for them on the front porch.

This time, it’s a fox. Neil knows, faintly, that it’s Palmetto’s mascot – when he watched one of the Exy team’s games, there’d been a person in an anthropomorphic fox costume running around during half-time to keep the crowds entertained. He faintly remembers Wymack once telling them at dinner it gave him the creeps. This skull has a little wolf and a little heart carved onto its muzzle, and it’s a direct message to Neil. They were there last night. They were there they were right there and he didn’t notice. He could’ve died or worse, Andrew could’ve died, but they were too busy _ making out _ to notice.

“If they get in without the intent of hurting you, we won’t detect them.” The Elder Mother explains to him later. This time, the whole team came together. She’s frowning, the closest to his mother he’s ever seen her get. “You can still leave, little pearl.”

The wolves growl at her, even though they were the first ones to tell him to go away. Neil will never understand her obsession with his well being. She’s not so overbearing with Kevin, and _ he _’s the one who made a deal with her. Or, well, the first one. “You know I can’t. And even if I did, they’d catch me.”

She sighs “You should’ve listened to me when I told you to run.”

He shrugs “Too late. How long, do you think, until they try something again?”

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t be able to stop them, and you can’t quarantine the whole town.” Neil knows she is right, but he considers it anyway.

.

The moment Jean is feeling well enough to start complaining, Wymack and Kevin call Rhemann and set a date for the extraction.

Neil hasn’t been to Abby’s house again ever since they brought the other witch in, but when the day comes, he’s there with Kevin and Andrew to escort Jean to the meeting point. They spend almost three hours, before they leave the house, weaving layers of magic around Jean, to keep him as unnoticeable as possible. They’d wiped him from the pack’s smell and dampened his persisting bond to Riko with two arms full of sigils he teaches Jean to maintain and remake. If _ that _ doesn’t work, Neil doesn’t know what will.

Jean’s magic smells, surprisingly, of earth after rain. Neil had been so used to his own, he didn’t even realize other witches’ magic could be different besides its manifestation.

During their ride to the meeting point, the car is dead silent, and Neil can’t help but think of how ridiculous they look on the back seat – him and Andrew sitting on each side of Jean’s tall and lean form –, so he spends most of the ride trying not to laugh. The first time they stop at a traffic light Wymack, the only other person on the car with a sense of humor, catches his eyes through the rearview mirror looking like he’s holding back from laughing as well, so they at least struggle together.

Dan, Renee, and Abby are in another car, tailing them. They are to be on stand by, watching for trouble from afar just in case something happens. As Kevin’s second, Dan hadn’t been happy to stay away. As a runaway, Neil hadn’t been happy to go. He still would rather remain anonymous, but nothing to do with Kevin leads him to anonymity, apparently.

At least the three wolves that compose Jean’s rescue party seem to share his sense of humor, if not his frustrations. Jean stays obediently between Neil and Andrew despite no one telling him he should, and only watches Kevin hug the guy in the front, smiling big and honest, and say “Jeremy” and “thank you for coming” and “these are Neil, my witch, Wymack, Andrew and Jean.” One of the two women standing behind Jeremy catches Neil’s eyes and snorts.

Jeremy gives them all a smile that threatens to melt snow and Neil tries not to think of how much _ more _ ridiculous Jean will look walking beside a California surfer bro. “These are Sarah and Laila,” Jeremy introduces the two wolves behind him, but his eyes are now on Jean, assessing.

“It’s Alvarez, actually,” says Sarah, who Neil has already dubbed funny-wolf. The other one, Laila, is too busy looking around for danger and assessing their position to pay attention to the conversation, so boring-wolf it is.

They’d decided to do this during the day in one of the main campus’ plazas, where it’d be hard to have a full out magic and werewolf display, easy to spot threats, and easier still to run away. Neil thinks this is all pretty useless anyway – if the Ravens show up to get Jean, nothing will stop him. The other witch seems to agree, because he only tolerates another moment of small talk before he says “Can we get this over with?”

Jeremy had been talking about their trip across the country or something equally boring, but he doesn’t even miss a beat when he says “Sure, the car is this way.”

They all watch him and Kevin say goodbye, Wymack sending well wishes to Rhemman, and Neil actually waves goodbye to funny-wolf, but he’s surprised when Jean doesn’t automatically move towards his new… Whatever they are.

Instead, he turns to Neil and says “The coven went rogue. The main pack either doesn’t know or doesn’t care enough to stop it.” Neil’s blood turns into ice, all amusement he’d felt until now leaving him. Jean stares at him with a serious expression for another moment – waiting for a reaction, Neil thinks – before nodding. “I won’t thank you,” he adds, before turning around and leaving them to stand between funny-wolf and boring-wolf. He doesn’t even look at Kevin when they cross each other, which might be for the best because the alpha looks like he’s going to puke.

Neil shares a look with Andrew before both of them step forward to flank Kevin instead. Jeremy with a hand on his shoulder, asks him “Are you sure? We can come back, help you protect the territory.”

“No,” Kevin says, more quickly than Neil would’ve expected. Hearing his cowardly alpha reject help is both surprising and a little disappointing. He thinks if someone would come for their aid, it’d be this pack. The more he spends time with the wolves, the more Neil realizes just how wrong his mother had been. “You’re doing more than enough. Thank you.”

Jeremy looks like he wants to fight back, but he just hugs Kevin again, whispers “Don’t die, you crazy asshole,” and lets go.

Kevin, Neil tries not to notice, does not make any promises.

.

Three days before Christmas, the Ravens leave a small cat skull under the elder tree. It’s Pippin who lands on his shoulder, as he walks from one class to the next, and tells him _ ‘The fairy is calling you.’ _

Neil takes a bus to the other campus but decides to walk the rest of the way to her. When he arrives, she’s standing under the tree, waiting for him with a deep frown that makes him think of Mary’s bad days. Before he can even ask what is wrong, she opens her hands to show him the skull. They both stare at it, at the small smiley face etched into it. “How did they look like?” He asks, eventually.

“A woman.” _ Lola _ . “She was taller than you and had dyed red hair. She—” Mary hesitates, and he almost asks _ ‘What’s wrong mom?’ _ before he remembers himself. There are too many of his ghosts haunting him at once.

“Tell me.”

“She knew I was there. I didn’t show myself, but she looked straight at me before she left.” This is another familiar look: fear. She looks terrified.

“I know that’s not all.” The fairy shakes her head, looks away from him. It makes him think of Andrew, always keeping things in. “It’s okay.” He tells her. His mother used to say fairies didn’t hate liars – just the bad ones. Perhaps white lies are appreciated regardless of species. 

The fairy sighs and says “She asked me to tell you it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Neil laughs, short and desperate. “What _ other way _ is there?”

“She said if you hand yourself over, they’ll stop.”

“Lola is a liar.”

“She said… She said if you don’t, they’ll save him for last.”

He stares at her, his mind a raging storm, his body something detached and foreign, his mouth moving on its own “Save who?”

“Your wolf. Andrew.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there!!  
I'll try to answer the asks I haven't yet before Friday. Thank all of you who are still around, and I'm sorry again for the delay. I will see this through until the end even if it's from beyond the grave. Feel free to come chat or scream or demand chapters from me at my tumblr, belladonna-queen!  
See you next week :)  
P.S.: SO, IDK IF YOU GUYS SAW IT, but [wyverning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21076976) wrote an AU of this AU in which Andrew was born a wolf, and it's the absolute cutest, I'm so in love with it, really!!! Go read it if you'd like to find out a little bit more about werewolf lore in the Green Creek Series, and also if you'd like to read some fluff of our best boys!!


	9. sing me home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This chapter is a little violent, there's a lot of blood, and descriptions. If you're uncomfortable with canon-violence, come talk to me before reading, srsly. I'll try my best to answer without triggering anyone, and I did try to make it as short as possible because I hate writing violence.

_ ‘You can’t honestly be considering handing yourself over.’ _ King says, later. He’s decided to walk home, needing to think, and both birds came back to him a little after he left the tree, so it’s him and his three tattoos debating the pros and cons of _ dying _. With his privacy wards raised, he feels safe enough to answer the cat out loud.

“I’m not,” he says, even though they share his thoughts and lying is useless.

_ ‘They’ll take you, and break into here anyway and kill them while you watch,’ _ Pippin tells him. It’s probably the first and only time he’ll ever see the sparrows agree with King.

Also, he didn’t know his sparrow was so grim. It’s to be expected – the only reason King is this annoying is because he was equally annoying as a child. Still, he could do without pessimistic birds echoing his worst fears back at him.

“They might not. You heard mom. She believes them, and lying to a fairy is way harder than lying to me.”

_ ‘Abram, she’s not your mother.’ _ He knows. He knows this. It’s just easier to talk about the fairy like that. She didn’t seem to mind, anyway.

_ ‘You have to tell them,’ _ Merry pipes in. _ ‘They’ll understand. Maybe we can still run.’ _

“No, I don’t. They’d kill me. And you know we can’t.” He doesn’t have the time to deal with the aftermath of revealing who he is. And running is out of question.

_ Tether. _

No. He can’t deal with this right now. King sighs, knowing exactly where his mind went. _ ‘They’ll protect you with their lives if you ask them to, truth or no truth, and you know it.’ _

That’s why he hates discussing with King. This whole conversation is a low fucking blow.

“That makes it worse.”

Neil doesn’t want them to die, and that’s the whole point. Maybe if he goes willingly— maybe if he does what they want— _ maybe _then they’ll have a chance.

_ ‘Their chances are better with a powerful witch by their side.’ _

He thinks about it for some time. “I guess. Only if they need to fight, though, and I don’t think that’s what my father wants.”

_ ‘…Why?’ _

“Because Jean says they went rogue. Which means they’re not here under Moryiama orders, and the alpha of all will probably kill them for it. They are also being hunted, and if they want me, they’ll need to be quick about it.”

_ ‘That’s… It changes nothing.’ _

Neil smirks. It’s the first time he’s seen his cat hesitate. “It changes everything, and you know it.”

.

Before he heads home one last time, Neil makes a small detour to where Andrew’s twin brother works. He’s lucky enough to find Katelyn inside, sans Aaron. She recognizes him and only hesitates for a moment before smiling and greeting him with a chirped “Hello, how can I help you?”

It reminds him of Wymack cornering him at the book shop back in Millport. Neil grins back, knowing very well there’s nothing particularly nice about his smile, and says “A small espresso and a favor.”

Katelyn only pauses typing his order for a moment before she says, voice low so they aren’t heard “Are they really coming for you?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes are clear when she looks up. “I won’t fight. I love Abby, and I’m thankful to her and Wymack, but I won’t.”

“Good. I was counting on you not being an idiot like the rest of them.” He feels a little hypocritical, not adding himself to the stupidity list, but the list is his own, so he makes the rules. “This is about Aaron,” he adds after another moment.

Katelyn only needs a moment to catch up “You want me to protect him?”

“I want you to take him and run.”

“But how? I’m not pack, I can’t feel the wards. I won’t know when things go wrong.”

The lady behind him on line clears her throat, clearly annoyed. Neil ignores her in favor of showing Katelyn the sparrow tattoo on his forearm. “I’ll send it to warn you. Just promise me this.”

“Excuse me? You’re holding the line,” says the lady. Neil sends her a look that promises murder before turning back to Katelyn. She’s holding his drink, her costumer smile back in place.

“I am really sorry, ma’am. Here, sir, your order is ready.”

When Neil reaches out for it, she reaches out with her other hand to hold his own. She looks serious and determined as she nods at his searching gaze. It’s answer enough for him. It might not be enough for Andrew, of course, but it’ll have to be. They have used up all their cards.

And there’s no time.

.

He’s only a few steps away from the house when he tugs at the bond and tells his wolves to _ come, now _. It’s lunchtime so the answers are almost immediate: Seth is out the door in seconds asking him “What’s wrong, what happened?”

Neil just shakes his head “Let’s just wait for the others.”

“Are we under attack?”

“Not yet,” he answers as he passes Seth and goes to the living room. It’s bleak enough to shut anyone up.

Seth follows behind him, and they stay standing for a moment, staring at each other, before he opens his mouth to warn “The others are on their way.”

Neil nods at him before turning around to climb the stairs. He grabs his duffle from the room and takes a smaller bag from inside it before going back down. Seth takes one look at him and sighs “You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”

With a shrug, Neil opens the bag to show him what’s inside. “Silver powder.”

And before Seth can protest, he starts sprinkling it on the windowsills, using his chalk markers to write symbols on the glass before moving on to the next window. After all the windows on the first floor are finished, he tells Seth “Don’t touch anything, it’ll hurt you” before going upstairs to repeat the process. He leaves only the front door alone, ignoring the wolves as they arrive, letting them watch him work and whisper among themselves.

The pack is all there in less than twenty minutes. Neil can’t help but think they will all get speeding tickets for their trouble, but they arrive and one by one check to make sure Neil is still whole. When the last one of them arrives, Andrew, Neil has already finished blocking every way out of the house, and he stays still as Andrew presses a hand to his chest. He can feel the tug at the bond that tells him Andrew is also _ there _ . It’s such a rare feeling he actually tugs back for once, a quiet _ here here here _ that seems to settle all of them, Andrew most of all.

_ Tether. _

Neil refuses to think of the downsides, the consequences.

They all stand together in the living room, all eyes on Neil, and they can probably feel what he’s feeling, his fear and sadness and anger, so he’s not surprised when Kevin asks "What’s wrong?"

He takes the small skull from his pocket, hands shaking a little. "The Elder Mother called me as soon as they left."

They all stand there staring at it for a long time, their feelings echoing his own. He can hear them whispering down the bond _ what will we do, what can we do, how much time do we have left _. Neil shakes himself out of it and calls out "I need you."

All his tattoos stir, and a moment later both birds come out to stand on his shoulder, quiet and solemn. The cat drops to the ground but Neil is quick to pick it up again. He burrows his hands on its fur, presses his face to its side, and holds it tight against his chest. They’d reached an agreement, earlier. Now, Neil has to keep his end of the deal.

He looks up, at his pack, and opens his mouth to explain, but before he can get past the “I—”, Neil chokes on air and lets out a broken cry of surprise and pain and doesn’t even notice when he drops to his knees— _ there’s a breach _ . He can feel it, suddenly, as someone had hit him physically. Someone just broke into the wards. They didn't just come in. They broke _ a hole _ into his _ wards _ and it hurts _ it hurts it hurts _—

He presses both hands into his eyes, curves down into himself, tries to calm down so he can pinpoint where the breach was; somewhere south, he thinks, somewhere near the highway, close to the international airport.

There is shouting – _here he’s here_ _he’s still here they are not here but they are coming coming com–_ someone is shaking him, calling “Neil! Neil _talk_ to me!” He opens his eyes and Andrew is right in front of him on the ground, holding both his hands away from himself, and Kevin is talking behind him, looking terrified “What the fuck is going on?!” He shouts, and Neil vaguely registers the cat pressed flush against his chest, both birds circling his head.

Merry whispers _ ‘I’ll go to the wolf’ _ and he just nods. It flies away, and Neil looks at it go and does not say goodbye. He breathes in deep and tells Pippin “Go to the Elder Mother and tell her we’re setting a perimeter.” And out it goes through the window.

"Is no one going to ask what the fuck is going on?" Allison hisses. Someone else shushes her.

Neil takes a moment to breathe in slow before saying "There's a witch coming here," and they all look at him weirdly because they all know there’s a witch coming. They all know who it is and why.

"We know, Neil. We’ve been preparing for it for months," says Dan, gently. She looks like she wants to hug him. Neil shakes his head, wanting more than anything to let her do it.

"You don’t know, though. You couldn’t." It's weird, how steady his voice is. How calm he feels. His wards are down and he can hear the wolves inside his head whispering _ pack friend witch neil _ and _ sad? why sad? _ he can feel their _ worry _ and _ love _, so doesn't look at them, doesn’t look at Andrew, only at Kevin, when he says "There's a witch coming, and he's coming for me. My father."

Kevin says "I don't understand," he says, "I thought your parents were dead," he says "why do you _ feel _ like that?"

_ (That first day, as his father carved that first tattoo into his skin, Abram cried quietly the whole time, staying still because he knew he'd be punished if he didn't, not letting a sound out because he knew his suffering would please his father. His mother said he was a very smart boy. His mother said he would become a very powerful witch. He still wished every day for claws with which he could tear his father apart. _

_ After his father called it a night, he remembers laying on the chair for hours, his back hurting, his palms bleeding from where he dug his nails into them. There was movement from the door, and when he turned to look – expecting his mother – a boy stood there, eyes wide. Kevin Day. The son of the previous Alpha of All. He was tall and gangly, all weird angles, as most teenagers are. He looked at Neil and asked, "why do you smell like that?" _

_ "Like what?" _

_ "Like blue.") _

_ Like blue blue blue _. He feels like blue. Grief for something that is going to be taken from him yet again. "I thought we'd have more time," his voice breaks, and it’s the only apology he can bear to give right now.

Andrew reaches for him, hands hovering less than an inch above his heart. "Neil," he says, even though he knows. Not everything, but enough.

Tether.

"Don't tell me to stay," Neil gets out before Andrew can say it, because leaving after that would destroy him. Andrew’s fingers twitch, like he’s only now realizing where this will end. After a moment he drops his hand. Neil turns back to his Alpha. _ His Alpha. His Alpha. _ "There's only one reason they would come here."

"We can protect you," Kevin says, sounding sure of himself and his pack for the first time ever. Neil almost feels bad for him.

"No, you can’t." Kevin growls, offended and frustrated and probably five seconds from throwing some Alpha-fit over trusting one’s pack. "Not against Nathan," Neil whispers and, at last, he drops his glamours, his last line of defense, and lets Kevin look at his eyes and his face and his hair, taking it all in like he's piecing together a puzzle – here's Neil, so similar to his father anyone who met him would know. He can feel it, the moment Kevin makes the connection. He can hear it echoing down the bond. _ Wesninski _. It sounds like a curse. Like an accusation.

It tastes like ashes and acid on his tongue. He doesn't dare repeat it out loud.

"Nathaniel," Kevin says after a moment. "Why?" He asks, afraid and hurt and desperate and _ blue blue blue _ . Neil shakes his head – he can’t answer the question. _ "Why? _" Kevin repeats, but the meaning changes.

"Because you called me. Because I was to be yours and you called me and I made you a promise and even though I didn't know, even though I should've ran the moment I saw you, or when you told me about Riko, when you asked me to stay I couldn't say no."

"What will you do?" He asks, and he means _ How will you survive this? _

"I'll leave."

"It will kill you," Kevin says, disbelieving. "Even if he doesn't find you, it will kill you."

His voice is strong and sure when he says "He's ninety minutes away from here. From _ you _. I can't let him near you."

"You can't live without a tether. You said so yourself, losing it again will kill you." He knows. It almost killed him the first time.

"He doesn't plan on living," Andrew says, voice cold and detached. There’s so much red echoing down the bond, though, his control feels fabricated. "He's not running away. He's handing himself over."

Neil only hesitates a moment before saying “They gave me a choice.”

"They’re _ liars _."

"I have to try anyway."

"Nobody likes a martyr," Andrew growls, and Neil almost smiles.

"It was bound to happen." His mother had always said he’d end up as some random creature’s lunch if he wasn’t careful.

"_ Bullshit _."

There it is, the fury. Neil doesn’t even try to argue. Instead, he repeats.

"I thought we’d have more time."

He doesn’t apologize. He won’t. Andrew would probably punch him if he did.

"You’re giving up," Seth says.

"You can’t do that," Allison says.

"Neil, please," Renee says.

The bond shakes with _ stay neil stay don’t go we are strong we are family we are pack we will protect you you will protect us you are ours and we are yours _.

For a moment Neil lets himself consider staying. Letting them hold him, letting them try to hide him from the cruelty of what will inevitably come next. He dreams of letting them fight for him, letting himself fight alongside them. Abby is already crying. She would be the first to fall, he thinks. They’d go for the weakest links first, force the others to try and protect them while also protecting themselves. Seth would be next, because he’s reckless and fearless. And Lola had promised she’d save Andrew for last.

For the first time in ages, Neil brings up his personal wards to silence them.

They all feel it, when he leaves.

He feels their absence like a missing limb. He’d never thought he’d hate the quietness of his own thoughts so much.

There are tears in her eyes when Dan asks "Is there no other way?"

He looks at her, at the pack, all of their eyes on him; he can feel their heartbeats, in sync with his own. They are the strongest people he’s ever known, and they are his as much as he is theirs. He’d risk the world to stay here. He’d risk himself, to stay here. But he wouldn’t dare risk them.

_ (Once upon a time there was a boy. He was tiny still, even though the children around him grew bigger and stronger. His mother always told him his strength laid elsewhere, but watching Kevin and Riko brawl on the backyard, all the boy wanted was to be like them.) _

"Thank you," he says, finally, and he doesn’t say what for. Their kindness, their willingness to accept him as one of them. Wymack, for asking him to come. Kevin, for telling him to stay. Andrew, for calling it his home.

_ (The night the tattoo was completed, when Kevin found him crying and hurting in the tattoo chair, even though the wolves were all howling somewhere else, Kevin had stayed beside him, repeating their mantra "When I am older, you can be my witch and I’ll be your Alpha." _

_ "I’m his," he remembers saying, rebutting Kevin’s promise for the first time, words falling heavy from his lips. "He branded me like livestock. I’m his." _

_ "You’re not," Kevin had told him quietly "you’re mine." He’d threaded careful fingers through Abram’s hair, let him lay his head on his shoulder and held him as he cried himself to sleep. _

_ When Abram woke up, daylight had just began filtering in from the window, but Kevin was still beside him, watching. "When I am older," Kevin had told him, "we will leave this place and never come back.") _

He remembers, the night he left, thinking of this promise. But his mother told him wolves lied, she told him they’d use you then eat you and leave nothing but bones. Oh, how his mother was wrong.

The one who lied and used and destroyed was him.

"Thank you,” he repeats, his voice breaking. “For everything. You were amazing." He bows down one last time, kisses the top of King’s head, places it on the ground, and gets up. Andrew stays kneeling on the ground, looking up at him. He breathes in deep, and wills his voice to remain steady as he says "Your heart is my heart, my magic your breath."

Andrew’s eyes darken as he recognizes the words; he looks down at King, who stares back at him as it says _ 'A home away from home.' _

"I won’t let you," his wolf growls. "I’ll chase you to hell, if you try to leave. I’ll kill you myself."

"You won’t." And it’s so sure, even Andrew looks shocked. Neil looks away from him and back to Kevin, and he gives his alpha a final gift: “The wards will hold.”

The cat’s tail swishes back and forth, and to the wolves, it recites, its voice gentle like a summer breeze and quiet like the night’s air, _ ‘I would like to watch you sleeping, _

_ which may not happen. _

_ I would like to watch you, _

_ sleeping. I would like to sleep _

_ with you, to enter _

_ your sleep as its smooth dark wave _

_ slides over my head _

_ and walk with you _

_ through that lucent _

_ wavering forest of bluegreen leaves _

_ with its watery sun and three moons _

_ towards the cave where you must descend, _

_ towards your worst fear _

_ I would like to give you the silver _

_ branch, the small white flower, the one _

_ word that will protect you _

_ from the grief at the center _

_ of your dream, from the grief _

_ at the center. I would like to follow _

_ you up the long stairway _

_ again and become _

_ the boat that would row you back _

_ carefully, a flame _

_ in two cupped hands _

_ to where your body lies _

_ beside me, and as you enter _

_ it as easily as breathing in _

_ I would like to be the air _

_ that inhabits you for a moment _

_ only. I would like to be that unnoticed _

_ and that necessary.’ _

The first one to drop is Allison – she crumbles to the ground without a sound. Then it’s Matt, then Seth. Dan has enough time to ask “What—” and then she’s down as well. One by one, the wolves fall to the ground. Neil stands behind his cat and looks Wymack in the eyes as he falls. Andrew’s fury and fear keep him up for another second, but it’s useless.

This isn’t just Neil’s magic, but the Elder Mother’s, and with their magic combined and the lack of malicious intent that might otherwise call upon the wolves’ instincts, none of them will be able to fight it. Neil stands in place until they are all unconscious on the ground, the room eerily quiet, before he makes his way around his pack, careful not to hurt any of them.

As he leaves home, Neil doesn’t look back.

King stays where it is, the pack’s warden and guardian, and because they are one and the same, because in a few hours they will both be dead and gone, it doesn’t try to tell him goodbye either.

He takes the first pair of car keys he can find, locks the door behind him, finishes placing the last of the silver powder, effectively sealing his wolves inside their home, and walks towards the street like everything is normal. He drives Andrew’s car out of Palmetto and into the highway.

Inside his head he can hear the countdown, every second bringing him closer to death.

.

There’s a small gas station between Columbia’s National Airport and the city, and that’s where he stops, parks the car in a corner and leaves it behind with the key in the ignition. If he were stronger he’d leave the bond open just to know where and how the wolves are, or at least ask King to keep him updated. By now they must already be awake, probably pissed off, probably running after him, despite knowing who he is, despite knowing it’ll be too late.

As he waits, Neil does not think of his father. He takes the memories that hurt him and terrify him – of the Baltimore house and the years on the run – and puts them inside a box, hides them somewhere he cannot see.

He thinks of his pack instead, holds those memories close to his heart, repeats their voices inside his head, the sound of their laughs.

If he closed his eyes, he could probably see them, during morning runs and late-night drives, running through the trees and lying around the living room watching TV, or sleeping together in piles after a full moon. If he closed his eyes he’d be vulnerable, though, so he keeps watch instead, and it’s not long until an old, nondescript car pulls into the gas station, and Neil watches as Lola and Romero Malcom stop a few feet away from him and come out of it. They approach him, apparently barehanded, and he raises both his hands to show he’s also not carrying weapons. Now that he’s looking at them, the warning alarms inside his head go silent. He can almost feel the territory holding its breath, waiting to see what will happen next.

Lola laughs when she sees him alone. “Hello, Junior, how nice to see you again. Your father will be glad you came willingly.”

Neil has to force each word through his closed throat to ask “Is he here?”

Romero takes him by his arm, uses magical and physical strength to push him to his knees. It’s Lola who answers “He’s holding the door open” and smiles knowingly when she sees the relieved look on his face. “Good job with the wards.” _ Not good enough _, she doesn't say, but then again she doesn't need to. They use magic to trap his hands together, and Romero searches him for tracking devices before they half drag him into the back of the car.

Before Lola slams his door, he hears a howl echoing in the distance, and Neil _ hurts _ with the sound of it. Lola gets into the backseat and says, laughter in her voice, “They’re coming for you, how sweet.” She sounds like she wants to be found, but he's not going to die for nothing.

“I have decoys in place. They won't come.”

Lola makes a small disappointed sound, and Romero drives them out of the gas station and towards the highway.

He thinks, maybe, they were ordered not to hurt him before Nathan can, but it’s not long before Lola has her hands on him, her nails dragging lines on his arms and it burns burns burns— he screams and she laughs and somewhere inside him, the last tendrils of hope burn away.

“Oh,” Lola says an eternity later, his blood running down his arms and hands and dripping on the floor “this is going to be fun.”

A sad thought: letting go isn't even that hard.

He knows this is necessary, and the right thing to do, knows it in his very bones. When Lola asks, he says he didn’t even tell them his name and he's _ not lying _ . When she taunts him, he says they won’t come for him, and makes it be the truth. When she presses her burning hands to his skin, he screams and screams and thinks _ This could’ve been them _.

The hardest thing is to hold on: to Kevin’s determination. To Allison's sarcasm. Dan's fierceness. Seth’s quiet companionship. Matt's kindness. Renee's respect. Wymack's understanding. Abby, who was the first to offer him a home. And Andrew. Andrew’s hands. Andrew’s eyes. Andrew’s voice. Andrew’s scent. Andrew’s heartbeat under Neil’s fingers.

She asks him “Where is your mother now?” And he screams _ she’s gone I swear she is gone you killed her you killed her you— _

She asks “Where's your magic now?” And it ripples right under his skin, an ocean of power just out of reach, and he has to fight to keep it under control, fight not to react.

“Where's your pack now?” And he thinks _ safe safe safe please be safe please stay away _.

She says “She can't save you. It can't help you. They won't come for you.” And laughs at the noise he makes when she presses a burning hand to his cheek. 

He thinks _ I would burn the whole world to ashes if it would keep them safe _ . And he hopes, he really hopes, they won’t come – he prays for the silver wards to stay in place, prays for the Elder Mother to keep her promise and lock the wards, prays for the scent trails he left behind as decoys to work, prays for Katelyn to take Aaron and run. But there’s a small, selfish part of him that grows with every second and it whispers _ I thought they would fight harder, for me _.

He screams and holds on, screams and keeps them close, screams and screams and, when it becomes too much, he lets it go. Says goodbye to their laughter, goodbye to their hugs, goodbye to fleeting touches and firm ones, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

It is months, years, centuries later when they leave the wards and, in their place, Lola carves a hell of pain and flames. Neil’s voice cracks and fails and dies out. The car stops, eventually, doors open and someone drags him out and drops him on the floor and kicks him until something else cracks and he whimpers and finally they leave him alone in the dirt. The wind here is different, foreign, and the earth doesn’t talk to him when he presses his ear to it.

He feels his territory’s absence like a hole in his chest.

Neil wishes he’d thought of looking for a magical version of painkillers before handing himself over on a silver platter. And now, a few moments away from dying, Neil finally allows himself to think of his mother. Mary, the guardian. Mary, the fighter. Mary, the liar. Mary, saint protector of runaways and lost causes.

There’s a snarl and Neil looks up to see a black wolf in chains a few feet away from him. Its eyes are violet and there’s blood dripping from its mouth and as he watches it struggles against the restrains to try and reach him. 

"The second son thought we’d let him get away with hurting our witch," Lola explains, and as she says it, it dawns on Neil that this right here is Riko Moriyama. "Oh, don’t feel the need to pity him" she goes on "he was the one who recognized your smell, you know. I think he’s still mad because you ran away before he could get his claws on you."

Riko growls and pushes and pushes and pushes against the chains around his neck, like he doesn’t even notice the blood dripping from them. The chains are silver, Neil notices at last. They must burn like hell.

_ Good riddance _, he thinks but, to Lola, he asks "Aren’t there fewer of you?" Because, from where he is lying on the ground, he can only see a handful of witches, some of them watching the tree line, some of them watching him. "Did they not get the invitation?" And because he knows he’d both very dead and very screwed, Neil giggles.

Lola kicks him in the stomach. When he only groans, she does it again.

"Now, now," says the voice from his nightmares. "Let’s not end the fun before it begins."

Nathan appears from one of Neil’s blind spots and smiles down at him. There’s nothing friendly about it. Neil thinks of broken bones and cut flesh. He thinks of magical burns bruises that didn’t vanish for days. He thinks of his mother, quiet and stone-faced, and Lola, cruelly wild and viciously untamed. He thinks of the collar of pain that is still around his neck, a sign of ownership.

Nathan says “My son. My greatest disappointment.”

And Neil, foolish Neil, growls “I am mine and mine alone.”

His father’s smile grows bigger.

His father says “I hope you know I’ll cut you slowly.”

His father says “I wish I could’ve seen your mother die.”

His father says “Now, you’ll have to suffer for the both of you.”

Neil closes his eyes and doesn’t look, doesn’t look, doesn’t look. There’s a hand around his neck and his whole body _ explodes _ in pain, seizing under the strength of the first shock, and he screams and begs and cries but he refuses to look into his father’s eyes as he kills him.

Nathan has a blade in hand and he describes everything he intends to do with Neil in detail, which tendon he’ll cut first, where he intends to hang his body for his pack to find.

There’s already so much blood spreading on the dirty snow under him, and Neil moans and cries, back arching and hands clawing into the icy ground, but doesn’t beg anymore. Not because he doesn’t see a point, not because he knows it only brings his father pleasure, but because his voice is gone gone gone and it refuses to come back. The tears keep flowing.

His father says “I want you to understand who you defied before I kill you.” And in the back of his mind, he thinks of this same voice telling a younger version of him

_ (“Pain is a lesson, Nathaniel.” _

_ “I am doing this to you so you can be stronger, so you can be better.” _

_ “One day you will thank me for this”) _

Clearly, Neil hasn’t learned anything. The last thing on his mind right now is gratitude. Maybe it will come, with death.

A wolf howls nearby.

He’s probably delirious. Or dying. Maybe both.

There’s a snarl and a shout and when he opens his eyes, there’s red splattered on the ground and a black-brown wolf standing on top of a witch’s body. Matt. Neil closes his eyes again and prays this is some sort of cruel illusion. He tells himself not to look because he won’t give his father the satisfaction of killing him twice.

They scream _neil, Neil, NEIL IS HE DEAD IS HE DEAD NO NO NO SOMEONE GET TO HIM _and they are inside his head every shield stripped down and destroyed, they are here _they are_ _here_ they are _real_, and this is his worst nightmares turning into reality. Neil fights against his own body, against the pain and the sickness and his own weak mind as he raises his head to look at his pack.

Allison and Abby are holding up the backline, looking for weak points and watching the pack’s backs. Seth is jumping onto three witches at once, and Neil thinks he’s dead for sure, but Renee emerges from the shadows behind them and takes two witches out before they even realize Seth was just the distraction. Wymack and Dan fight together with a level of precision that can only be born of years of training, and they both are Kevin’s main support as he claws his way through flesh and bone towards Neil, his voice like thunder calling through the bond _ witch witch witch pack pack pack mine mine MINE _.

Neil closes his eyes again, presses his head to the ground and tries to keep himself from sobbing. Assholes, the lot of them. Here is Neil, a liar and a destroyer, getting exactly the end he deserves. And here is his stupid, stubborn family, willing to die with him, _ for _him.

His pack howls of _love_ and _pack_ and _home_, _neil neil neil_ _protect help save_, and Neil echoes it all, opens his mouth and forces out every word of a protection spell, throat raw and hurting but finally working, and the air around them ripples with magic, and he feels every singular thread that binds them together. Neil listens to their heartbeats and buries his fingers into the ground, his own wet blood tainting his fingers and drags himself forward inch per inch towards them.

There’s thunder and lightning and Dan flies through the air and hits the ground with a loud yelp. A second later Wymack throws himself into her attacker, stopping him from finishing her off. _ Nathan _. Neil screams and the world quakes, the ground cracks and bends, both witches and wolves stumble and fall, but his father turns in a swift motion and, with a swipe of his hand, Wymack’s course changes midair and he falls beside Dan. Neil closes his hands into fists on top of the cold earth, and the ground rises up to cover the wolves one second before his father can burn them both.

Nathan turns towards him, still smiling, and twists his hands in a familiar motion. Neil feels the air around him become charged and he has one second to protect himself before lightning breaks out around him, his protection circle keeping him safe but cracking under its power. His father starts making his way towards him, and Neil only has a second to fear before two wolves show up at his sides. Kevin and Andrew crouch low, both of them so big Neil almost disappears between them. Inside his head, he hears them say _ hurt bleeding alive _ , and _ protect protect protect _.

He thinks _ you should’ve let me go _, and their answer is immediate and unanimous: 

_ Never _.

So be it, then. If they want to fight for him, he will fight for them.

Neil calls up ice, the spells easier thanks to the winter weather, air turning to water turning to blades pointing towards every heart not in sync with his own. His blood freezes on the ground and on his clothes, and he knows if Nathan doesn’t kill him, _ this _will, and it still might not be enough. When his father is close enough Andrew pounces, misses Nathan’s leg by inches, gets a kick for his trouble, but Kevin is right behind and with the three of them, his father struggles to retaliate.

Andrew swipes at his leg and Kevin bites down on his arm, but they both have to get away before they get hit by a wall of fire. Neil is fast to call on water, but he’s not strong enough to keep more than a spell on, and he’s learning that with elemental magic, it hardly affects only what he wants it to. So, he changes tactics, focuses on stopping other’s spells from working, calls down rain to stop the fires and forces earth to stay still under their feet. He raises walls and turns water solid or back into liquid, redirects every shot of lightning.

His vision swims and, a little too late, he notices two things: one, he’s lost too much blood. He closes his eyes for just a moment, and when he opens them again, whole seconds have passed. He tries to raise his hand and realizes he can’t feel his fingers.

Two, they’re winning. It’s impossible and unbelievable, but somehow it’s also true. Romero dies by Wymack’s claws, and his sister struggles for a few long seconds before Dan and Matt take her out as well. Neil recognizes Jackson running away a moment before Renee is upon him. Riko, still stuck to the tree, snarls and struggles against his restraints. Neil considers putting him out of his misery, but a moment later thunder roars above them and his attention goes back to his father.

Nathan is a one man army in the middle of it all, and it’s him who realizes Neil is no longer casting or fighting. He turns like a tornado upon Kevin, the movement all fury and vengeance, determined to take at least one of them down with him, using a storm of ice Neil had cast against the witches until a moment ago. Kevin falls under it, crouches low on the ground and tries to protect himself as best as he can, and Neil can do nothing as Nathan laughs, loud and triumphant, and raises his hand, blades of ice rising with it, and brings it down. Neil reaches for his magic, but there’s nothing left so he screams instead, the sound more pleading than warning.

Every wolf turns towards the sound.

The image will probably be etched into his mind forever: a thousand ice shards, inches away from killing Kevin, whose teeth are bared in the face of certain death. And behind them, a smudge of sand-colored fur and blood-red fangs.

Andrew gets Nathan by the throat.

They both fall together, but there’s no struggle, no moment of doubt. The wolf shakes its head left and right in two curt motions. There’s the sound of bones breaking. The ice shards all fall down at once. Nathan’s head thumps quietly as it hits the ground, and a moment later Andrew rises his own head and howls.

The wolves answer readily.

Neil stares and stares and stares, struggles against the fog covering his mind just to savor the moment. He takes the image of Andrew, blood-stained and victorious, and stores it for the bad days. Seth limping towards Allison, Renee already right there beside her. Wymack and Abby, the first ones to reach Kevin and nose his side, looking for any serious injuries. Dan and Matt, eyes sharp as they look for stragglers. His pack. His family. He hears them, singing _ pack home safe _, hears the moment they realize he isn’t singing along.

Neil closes his eyes, takes the sound of every one of them calling his name, holds it close to his heart, and lets his wolves sing him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)  
one more to go.  
omg I completely forgot, the poem in this chapter is Margaret Atwood's "Variation on the Word Sleep"!! It's beautiful and amazing, as is the case with everything else she writes :)


	10. ninety-nine percent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I'm sorry for the radio silence... For those of you who don't follow me on tumblr, all I can hope for is that you're still around to read this. I'm going to write a long boring explanation at the end, with good news and all, but for now, I can only say thank you for sticking around and waiting.  
I hope this chapter is as good as I wrote it to be lol

Neil wakes up, and he's at a beach.

He's pretty sure he was dying somewhere in South Carolina only a few seconds ago, definitely in-land, and yet here he is: alive, somehow, and at a beach.

It’s a testament of how his life’s been up until now that he doesn’t bother to question what the fuck is going on and just accepts it for what it is – a dream, most likely, or perhaps a near-death delirium. The cold wind is throwing red hair into his face, and the waves are wetting his sneakers, and he has no idea of how he got here, but he’s here anyway. Because there's nothing to do, Neil goes explore. He looks around for seashells and tastes the water – it's definitely salty, which makes as much sense as everything else. This beach looks a little bit like every other one he's ever been to mashed together, like a generic concept instead of a real place. Neil wants to look at what's beyond the dunes next, but the moment he turns his back to the ocean, someone begins to sing.

Neil looks around, but there's nothing and no one on the beach which, and considering it is winter, is pretty understandable. The woman – _ oh right it’s a woman she’s a woman a woman _ – is still singing, however, so Neil does what he does best: he runs. Except this time, it's towards the voice.

It doesn't take long for him to reach it, although somehow once he does the scenario has changed entirely. It's nighttime, for one, and the waves are high and violent, and a storm is coming from the ocean, the smell of rain and sea salt and ozone permeating the air around him.

The dunes are gone, the beach like a flat extension of sand, marked on one side by the ocean and on the other by a short concrete wall with a mostly broken iron fence and, beyond it, a parking lot. The light poles are on, their weak light making the empty space eerie, and the road that leads to it looks like something out of a horror movie. Neil's heart is beating wildly on his chest. _ Oh _, he thinks.

_ Oh. I remember this place. _

The song is louder, now, and when he turns around there's the carcass of a burned car on the beach, and sitting on top of it, singing, is Mary. She looks young and healthy, and for a moment Neil lets himself hope this will be a good dream – one in which she's sane and happy that they're out. The burned car tells him others, though.

Neil looks at his mother, but she doesn't look back at him, too busy with her own voice to notice he's here.

Maybe he's dead. Maybe his soul is finally going back home. Back to the sea, as the songs had always promised he would. This thought pulls something in him that _ hurts hurts hurts _. This is too real to be a dream. The wetness of his shoes, the wind, the cold, the shaking of his limbs, it all feels real. The fear he feels is real. "Mom, I think I died." He tells her, because he always tells her everything.

_ No secrets, Abram, I can't help you if you hide it from me. _

Mary stops singing. Suddenly she's in front of him, eyes shining bright and furious, looking as wild as they did during her last months, and Neil can't help but flinch away from her. "You _ chose _to die," she accuses him.

"What? No, I—"

"You could've left," Mary goes on, not listening to him "you could've refused David Wymack's offer. But you were always like this." _ Weak _ , she doesn't say. _ Soft _. "Now look where it got you. I told you how this would end. I taught you everything I could. I did my best to keep you safe. And the moment I leave you alone..." She doesn’t finish the thought.

"You said they were going to use me." His voice cracks at the end and only now he realizes he's crying. He wants to reach out and ask her for comfort even though he knows she’s not that kind of mother. He wants to turn around run away from her. He wants to call her a liar, tell her she was wrong about everything, but this is Mary, his guardian and protector, and he’d do anything for her.

"Didn't they? All they wanted was your magic."

"No, mom, they came for me."

Mary pauses, looks at him. "You led them to their deaths."

_ You can't have friends, Abram. Everyone you know is at risk of your father's wrath. _

"I warned you," Mary says, as if she too can hear the phantom of her own voice.

Neil's shaking all over. "They might've survived. I— I think father is dead. And Lola. If they're—"

"The Alpha of All does not leave witnesses behind," she reminds him calmly. The storm finally reaches them, and in a second he's drenched to the bones. Mary remains untouched. Somehow, the wetness of his clothes leaves him with the feeling that he's failing a test. "What will you do, now?"

"I don't know."

"Will you come with me, Abram?" She doesn't sound particularly happy about it. Or inviting. Then she adds, like a challenge "Or will you swim on your own?"

"It's a typhoon, mom. We'd drown." But Mary is still dry despite the heavy rain, and Neil is cold and shaking in his flimsy clothes. They'd had this conversation before, too. This is California all over again. He wonders if, this time, it’s Mary who will burn him and leave him behind.

"Yes." She says, simply, and he doesn’t know which one of his thoughts she’s answering. Behind her, there’s already a wall of fire waiting for them, unaffected by the rain. _ The car _ , he realizes, _ it's burning _. He hadn't noticed the flames, nor the smoke. 

He hates how pleading his voice sounds when he says "I don't want to drown."

Mary gives him a smile that is all teeth. "You don't get to choose that."

The singing is back, louder this time. There are voices coming from the sea, calling him _ brother _ and _ sea child _, calling him to swim with them, to come home with them, but Neil had grown up to stories of mermaids and sirens and selkies and nereids, he'd grown up to the knowledge that they would never hurt one of theirs, but to anyone else they were nothing but a choir of deceit and death.

Neil is not one of them.

He can see the moment his mother sees this, the moment she realizes he will not sing with her. She bares her teeth to him, furious, her hands curling into fists at her sides, and under the light of the fire she looks like a ghost, like the kind of thing that comes crawling from the ocean in moonless nights, that drowns any seafarer foolish enough to act on their desires, like the vengeful spirit of drowning maids, and Neil's seen her power before, he knows one word from her would have them both under the water where she could easily trap him or kill him. The wind is howling a dissonant song, the clouds rumble and the ground shakes with the power of thunder, and he could fight her, probably, but he won't.

Mary says "The day will come when you will regret choosing to lay your body to rest on the cold dark ground," voice full of derision, and throws herself to the waves.

Neil stares at the sea for a long time, before his knees finally give out and he falls to the ground and presses both hands to his eyes and thinks _ this is just a bad dream, this must be a bad dream _ , but somehow he doubts it. _ I want to wake up I want to be anywhere but here I want to go go go— _

When he opens them again, he's on a clearing.

The forest around him is buzzing with the sounds of birds and summer bugs and wild animals. It looks like early morning, and the air smells of rain and freshly cut grass. After the beach, all Neil wants is to close his eyes and rest here. He’s already sitting on the soft grass, it’d be so easy to just lie down. Except, he realizes, this place isn't real either.

His mind might be looking for ways to deal with the trauma, or his magic decided to keep him stuck in creepy dreams so he doesn't have to deal with the pain of losing another tether. If either of those options is true, he should've let his mother take him. A fake life under the sea with his previous tether is probably better than a real one with all of them dead. 

That's when he notices there's a wolf on the clearing with him.

It’s just sitting there, a few feet away from Neil, as if it’d been there from the start – and he’s starting to get tired of things showing up where there was nothing before, but that’s not even the weirdest thing about this wolf. For a moment he thinks it's Kevin; their fur are the same shades of grey with white patches, their face is the same. What gives it away is the calmness in its eyes, the relaxed way it lies on the grass, head cocked, green eyes watching him. It reminds Neil of the queens from the tales he'd read and heard from the faeries.

When their eyes meet, the wolf gets up and walks towards him, and somehow he knows it— _ she _ would never hurt him. She stops right in front of him and, his voice vulnerable in a way he’d never allow it to be if this weren’t a dream, Neil tells her “I think I’m lost.”

Her eyes flare bright red, there and gone, and the whole forest calls her _ alpha, alpha, alpha _ . She presses her wet nose to his forehead, her voice beautiful and kind as she whispers _ child child child, you are pack, you are mine, you are not lost, you are home _and he can’t help but curl his hands around her neck. She lets him cling to her, stays still as he shakes, refusing to cry, and somehow he knows she would carry the weight of the whole world if it made him feel better. It takes a while but Neil finally manages to breathe in deep a few times, convinces his heart to stop beating like crazy, and tries not to think of this moment of fragility as a weakness. She watches him as he sits down properly, trying to look a little more dignified. Her eyes are sad and kind and wise. A true Alpha, like nothing he’s ever seen.

She watches as he looks around the clearing and the forest beyond.

“This forest is old,” he comments. But there’s also something timeless about it. The colors are strong and bright, the smells clear and distinct, the noises loud even to his weak human ears – the whispers of the wind, the wings of insects and the songs of birds, the sounds of tiny paws and swift feet and beating hooves, animals of all kinds and sizes running and walking and living here, and louder than all, big paws pressing against the earth with the surety of a wolf in their territory.

There are so many of them.

Wolves.

And now that he’d noticed them, became aware of them, they finally show themselves: wolves of all colors and sizes watching him from the edges of the clearing, their eyes Beta-orange and bright, and in a second their songs fill the air, the call of the pack, and they call him

_ brother _

_ witch _

_ child _

_ pack _

_ come play with us come run with us we will love provide protect you forever we will be yours as you are ours _

Kayleigh Day doesn’t join the song, but watches him as he finally understands this isn’t a dream, not really, and he might have to stay in here forever with them, and there’s no sign of his family among those wolves and he can only hope that means they’re alive, oh god they must be _ alive _ , but now he’ll have to wait for them to join him, and a wave of grief washes over him at the thought, before the alpha finally says _ no, no, no _

_ it’s not yet your time _

_ someone tried to take you and you called for help _

_ you came to us _

_ but that doesn’t mean you have to stay _.

Her eyes are soft as she promises _ one day we will run together, but now it’s time for you to go _.

“Go?” Neil asks “Where?”

_ Back. _ He stares at her, still not understanding, so she adds _ home. _

_ Wake up, little witch. _

And Neil wakes up.

He has enough time to process a few small details – the sky above him, dark blue; a huge tree blocking away most of his view of the moon; hands and more hands holding him down as his body tenses and he struggles against the pain. _ The pain the pain the pain. _ His mother’s voice gentle and worried telling him to “Go back to sleep, little pearl.”

He moans and thinks _ “Am I dead?” _ and doesn’t even realize he’s said it out loud until Andrew’s head shows up above him.

“You wish,” he growls, and Neil thinks _ Oh, he’s furious _. “Now shut up.”

Abby is in the middle of stitching him back together, he realizes.

He’s awake and it _ hurts _ like death, but at least he’s alive, and now he can feel the bonds, he can feel his wolves, he can hear them inside his head. Neil counts them, whispers their names, struggles to stay awake so he can hear them whisper back to him _ neil neil neil _, hear Andrew’s voice telling him “They’re fine, idiot, they’re here, you’re the only one who got hurt badly, I’ll fucking kill you for that, now shut up and sleep.”

_ we’ve got you, _ they tell him _ , we’ve got you now and we’ll never let you go again. _

Neil whispers "Andrew, Andrew, Andrew" and it sounds like a prayer, his name split into small pieces repeated again and again between labored breaths until they no longer make sense.

He’s holding Neil’s head between his hands to keep him from moving, but despite his harsh words, Andrew never leaves his field of vision, and he keeps talking until Neil’s breathing calms and he relaxes under their hold. Neil wants to stay awake, he wants to keep listening to Andrew's voice and the pack's presences inside his head, but there is the smell of cigarette smoke and grass, the thrum of his territory under him and around him welcoming him _ home home home _ , the knowledge that his family is alive and safe, and the Elder Mother is singing him a lullaby about how _ spring is coming soon, it’s almost here, and we will dance together then _ he’s never heard before, and he can’t keep himself from drifting off again.

.

This time, when he wakes up, he’s in Abby’s guest room, and there are eight wolves sleeping on the floor. Abby is sitting beside the bed, on an armchair they must have dragged from the living room. Neil knows he won’t get another opportunity like this one, so he takes some time to check every one of them over for injuries, mouthing the words of a diagnosis spell. _ 'They're fine,' _ King tells him from its place on his pillow. _ 'You should be worried about yourself.' _

Neil startles at its presence then sighs quietly. _ 'What happened?' _

_ 'Kevin broke the spell. Apparently, his _ alpha _ powers prevent him from being affected by your _ witch _ powers.' _

_ 'Or maybe we didn't try hard enough.' _

_ 'Speak for yourself. _ I _ convinced him to go to the Elder Mother and get her to break the spell instead of running after you by himself, and when Andrew woke up he almost killed me.' _

Neil holds back a laugh. _ 'You're not alive.' _

King bats at his head with all the fierceness of a kitty, mindful of his many stitches. _ 'It's the thought that counts.' _

_ 'And how exactly did they leave the house, with the wards and the silver?' _

_ 'I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I might have _ accidentally _ swiped some of that weird dust from the door. Honestly, this house needs some cleaning.' _

Neil can’t hold his laughter, this time, and all of the wolves wake up. They look at him, sharp and aware in a way that implies they hadn’t been really sleeping, just waiting. For him. He knows he owes them an explanation, something better than what he can give them, someone better than what he can be. 

But they want him, and he wants them, and this is all that matters when he drags himself into a sitting position, hissing because of his broken ribs, and tells them “I’m sorry.”

They all growl, a unified _ don’t you dare _ that makes him snort and wince at the pain. Neil looks at them and repeats “I’m sorry,” and his voice breaks on the word because he still can’t believe this is something he’s allowed to have.

He looks at them and says “I just— I couldn’t let them hurt you,” and it’s not the best explanation ever, but he still knows that he would burn the whole world for them. And now he’s starting to believe they would do the same for him.

He looks at them and says “I don’t want to leave,” and for a moment he feels like the foolish, lost boy Wymack half-dragged here all those months ago.

But this is his pack, this is his family, this is his home, and they make sure to tell him that. Andrew places his big head in Neil’s lap and tells him _ “You should’ve stayed from the start.” _ He sounds pissed off, but it’s so tinged with relief that Neil doesn’t even register it as a reprimand, doesn’t try to hide the small, wounded noise that leaves him, closes his eyes and drags both hands through his fur, lets the pack’s feelings run through him. There’s a loud wave of _ love love love _ and, added to it, he hears them say _ brother family witch little witch ours ours ours _.

And he answers, sure as he’s never been in his life: _ “Yours.” _

.

Recovery is a long, boring process that leaves Neil basically useless. It’s not just his body that needs time; he’d used so much of his magic that he’s dealing with symptoms of magical burnout as well as slow human-paced healing.

Abby refuses to let him leave her house. She’s very adamant that he is to stay in bed unless he needs to use the bathroom, and even then he should call her for help before getting up. 

Andrew stays with him most of the time as a wolf, always out of arm’s reach, refusing to transform for some unknown reason; Neil’s sigils are still drawn on him, hidden under his fur, and his side of the bond is quiet and still. It worries Neil, but there’s nothing he can do to change that.

Matt is banned from staying with him on the first night after he tries to sleep on top of Neil, as a wolf, and almost breaks most of his ribs again – he won’t stop apologizing, afterward, because he honestly didn’t remember Neil’s healing process “is only human and shitty as fuck right now and why won’t you _ stop laughing _ you’ll make it worse again, oh my god Neil”.

Kevin is banned after telling him he deserved it and getting kicked on the face, causing some of Neil’s wounds to reopen. 

Allison shows up once, takes one look at him and says “I’ll never speak with you again” before leaving. She doesn’t come back. Neil is used to it by now, though, and he appreciates the worry, if not the way she expresses it. Dan comes every day to bring him class notes and homework, and Renee joins her once or twice, but never stays for long. He finds it weird that they don’t come in groups – he's used to dog piles and being mobbed by five grown adults into watching shitty movies, but when they come it's alone or in pairs, and they rarely stay more than an hour. When he tries to ask about Riko or the fight or patrol, none of them tell him anything, either ignoring his questions entirely or giving him the “You need to rest and recover” spiel that Abby fed them.

It takes exactly three hours – and fifteen minutes of conversation with Matt – for him to figure out they’re hiding something, but it’s not until a few days later that he has enough magic back to send out both the sparrows so they can patrol themselves. 

Every day they come back with nothing to report, and every day Neil worries more about what’s to come. As his mother said, the Alpha of All doesn't leave witnesses and for them, that might mean death. Not being told what is going on makes it very hard for Neil to prepare himself for a fight, which is probably what they want – Abby's been telling him he should focus on healing, and the others insist they can do the rounds by themselves, but having Merry and Pippin out there checking the borders of the territory for trouble makes him feel a bit better. King stays with him, only leaving when Andrew leaves, and Neil would complain about how weird it is that his own familiar is following someone else around, but somehow he feels better knowing Andrew isn’t walking around by himself, even if they haven’t spoken to each other since the incident.

It feels different from Allison giving him the cold shoulder, or how he can feel Kevin tug on his end of the bond from time to time, to make sure they’re all still there. He knows that when he and Andrew do talk, it won’t be easy. Neil remembers the hate in his eyes, before he _ made _ him pass out. Neil will probably remember his words for the rest of his life. _ I’ll chase you to hell _. It doesn't stop him from wanting to just get it over with, though.

If not for King's insistent _ 'give him time' _ , Neil would've pushed Andrew for a conversation on the first day after he woke up. As it is, though, he waits patiently until one of the times Andrew gets up from his watching point by the window to leave, and King turns to him and says _ 'Come with us.' _

Neil hesitates before shaking his head. It’s the middle of the night, and there's no one else on the house. Abby is on patrol with Wymack, Kevin with Dan. The others are either asleep or out having fun. It wouldn’t be right for him to break their trust so soon after what happened. But then another voice tells him to _ hurry up. _

Andrew doesn’t wait for him to answer before going down the stairs, cat in tow.

It’s been so long since he heard Andrew’s voice, he’s taken by surprise and for a moment Neil just stays there, pulling at the bond Andrew had already silenced.

When he finally puts on some clothes and follows them down the stairs, Andrew’s already transformed and dressed, looking as calm and collected as ever. He barely glances at Neil before going out the door and into his car, and he doesn’t even wait for Neil to put on his seatbelt before peeling off the curb.

Neil doesn’t ask where they’re going because he knows there will be no answer, but he’s not really surprised when Andrew takes them to the packhouse. He is, however, very surprised when the wolf leads him down to the basement instead of up to his room. King trots down the stairs before the both of them and Neil hears Renee’s quiet voice saying “Oh, hi there. What are you doing here?” Andrew doesn’t even glance at him before following after it.

From all the things he thought he’d find down the stairs of his home, Riko Moriyama walking around his basement as a wolf was very much not on the list. There’s a long line of his powdered silver – which Neil can appreciate, because that shit is expensive as hell – keeping the Omega away from Renee, who is apparently the one watching him right now.

Riko doesn’t seem to even notice the new arrivals, too busy pacing around and growling at his own shadow, and Neil can’t really bring himself to feel bad for how he looks, the fur around his neck still clearly thinner than the rest of it, where the silver chains held him. He has more scars, too, places where Neil’s sure either Nathan or one of the others hurt him for no reason other than the fact that they could.

"Are you sure about this?" Renee asks Andrew, and Neil turns his attention back to the both of them.

"I’m fine," he tells her, when it becomes clear Andrew won’t. "I kind of guessed you were keeping him somewhere. Why here, though?"

"The Elder Mother refused to take him with her, and Kevin..." Kevin wouldn’t have the guts to kill him, Omega or not. Neil isn’t really surprised. Renee isn’t either. He can guess she offered to do it herself, by the look in her eyes when she turns back to stare at the wolf. "We called the Alpha of All the moment we got back," she tells him. _ That _ takes Neil by surprise, even though it really shouldn’t. Riko is a hunted wolf. An Omega. They all know a wolf without its tether is as good as dead.

"Did they say when they will come?" Neil asks, because asking _ if _they will come would be a waste of time.

Renee shrugs. "No idea. Why are you two down here anyway?"

Neil opens his mouth to say _ I have no fucking clue _ but he finally notices why Andrew’s been so quiet during the whole conversation. He’s too busy staring at Riko and his violet eyes, his whole body tense as a string. Riko, on the other side of the barrier, stops his pacing to come snarl and growl at Andrew who, surprisingly, growls back.

It startles Neil, who hadn’t really considered what it meant for Andrew to have an Omega this close to his house. The wolf that turned him, Neil remembers, had been an Omega. He is dead now, but still. Now he knows why Andrew’s been spending so much time at Abby’s house with him, even though he’s still pissed off.

"Andrew," Neil calls him, having already forgotten what Renee asked. Andrew doesn’t turn, but he does tip his head slightly, to show he’s paying attention. Riko turns his head to snarl at Neil as well, which makes both Andrew _ and _ Renee growl. Protective assholes, the lot of them. Because it’s worked well for him so far, Neil says the first thing that comes to mind to try and distract them "I’m going to call a meeting." This time Andrew does turn around, his eyes darker than before, a frown in place. Right. The last time he’d called a meeting, he’d put them all to sleep and left. Neil very sensibly ignores that small detail as he adds "C’mon, let’s go upstairs."

This time, when he sends the call, he makes sure to add as much of his calmness and reassurance as possible. Matt and Seth are both in the house, which makes things a little easier, as they are the most likely to freak out. This is proven right by how fast they run down the stairs and how surprised they look when they see Neil’s already there.

"When did you—" Seth begins saying, then he sees Andrew behind him. "Oh. Okay then. I’ll go get Al." And runs back upstairs.

Neil sighs quietly and settles on the couch, where he knows Andrew will keep an eye on him and make sure he's not pulling any more hat tricks. King will keep an eye on Riko while they talk, but Renee waits until the others arrive – all of them sending him varying looks of nervousness and worry – to go up and join them.

"I wanted to start by thanking you," Neil says, "for letting me stay." Andrew shifts from one foot to the other, bumping shoulders with Renee, and his face flickers from apathy to anger then back again in less than a second. If Neil weren't watching him specifically, he would probably have missed it. "I won't apologize for doing what I did, so... The least I can do is explain." He waits for any of them to speak up or protest, but when they don’t Neil takes a breath, steels himself and says "I got my first tattoo when I was ten years old. It was a rite of passage, for witches who had proven their worth to the coven. My test was—" he closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them and admits "there's no nice way to say it. I killed a wolf. An Omega." He lets their growls ripple through him and tries to drown out the echoes of her screams, the image of how tiny she looked before shifting. He doesn't look at Kevin when he goes on "With the proof that I had magic, I was given the tattoo. It's… it _ was _ a sign of ownership, of me belonging to the coven and to my father, and that's why whatever Riko had planned for me would never happen. I was too powerful to be handed over to the Moriyamas to serve as minor alpha's witch," _ or to leave with one _, he doesn't say. The look in Kevin's face when Neil glances at him tells him he understands, though. "When the tattoo was finished, my mother took me and ran." And he hesitates again, looking towards Andrew, this time. He’s looking bored as always, but Neil’s been watching him for long enough to know this right here is him pretending not to be curious.

This is where Andrew will be most pissed with him, because of the half-truths and outright lies Neil’s been feeding him during their car rides. And because he really doesn’t want to revisit all the shitty places he lived in with his mother, as Neil recounts his years on the run, he watches his wolves’ reactions instead of focusing on the memories.

Wymack' face falls slowly as he speaks, and Abby and Matt have similar expressions of sadness and hurt the moment Neil tells them about the test. Seth looks ready to kill someone from the moment Neil says ‘ownership’, and Dan looks like she'd help him. He tells them the stories behind each tattoo, touches them over his clothes absent-mindedly, tells them about the fairies who played with him in the woods, the cat that inspired King, the tree where he hid from his mother during her bad days, the witches they met on the road who taught them protection wards and the encounters and close calls with his father’s men. Andrew is, unsurprisingly, the only one who takes it all with an uninterested expression, but he's finally looking at Neil, and isn't this a nice feeling, knowing there's someone who only wants to know, no need for righteous fury or misplaced pity.

Even when he talks of California, of Lola and his mother getting hit and the storm, of burning the car with magic and staying there until not even a trace of her remained, of the long days of whispering voices and dancing shadows and walking through the world in a dream-like state, of his memories tricking him again and again and his magic turning into something with a will of its own, before he finally settled in Millport, and the even longer days before Wymack finally came for him.

By the time he’s done, it’s dark outside and the wolves look as exhausted as he feels. Neil isn’t sure if this is what they wanted, but it’s certainly not what they expected. He tried to gloss over most of his father’s aggressive behavior from before he even knew for sure Neil had magic, and his mother’s outbursts and paranoia, but he’s pretty sure they could infer most of it from the state they found him – and before that Jean – in. Not to mention the scars they must've seen as Abby tried to patch his already broken body back together.

They are all quiet for a long time, absorbing it all and trying to piece together the Neil they knew and the one that was presented to them. Neil stays quiet as well, takes a moment to organize his thoughts and lock away his memories, but ends up just looking at Andrew who is, miraculously, looking back at him, his gaze calm and steady. It helps him stay in the present, if nothing else.

After they seem to settle, Neil speaks again. "I made a deal with the Elder Mother, after the wolf skull showed up on our doorstep. She swore to keep the wards up, if I… You know," he finishes lamely.

"What did you give her, in return?" Andrew asks.

_ 'Me,' _ says King from the doorway. _ 'He gave her me. I’m half leaves and bark and root, now.' _ Its eyes are shining in a way that implies it doesn’t mind this outcome, but Neil’s starting to doubt if giving his cat this much power was a good idea. _ 'I wouldn’t die if he died. I am to be her messenger and herald, when necessary.' _

"Shouldn’t you be watching Riko?"

King ignores him.

"She took a _ cat _ as payment?" Andrew asks, sounding dubious.

Neil wisely doesn't share what he thinks – that she would've probably done it for free, if he'd died without going to her first – because, as King tells them a moment later, _ 'She can hear you right now.' _

"Look, this wasn't ideal, but the Elder Mother was willing to keep you safe and that's the whole point," Neil tells them firmly. "I knew you’d be safe if I—"

"Oh my god, shut up" Allison growls, still looking rightly pissed off. "You don't fucking know what it was like. You put us out. You left, and then we had to scramble around blind while hearing them— _ feeling _ them—" She breathes in hard and exhales a moment later, clearly giving up on explaining.

It's Renee who picks up, her voice gentle "When we woke up, you were already out of the wards. I— We heard it. When they hurt you, we could hear you screaming. You couldn't hold any of your wards up and the birds just vanished and there was pain tearing through the bond and we— Neil you have no idea what it was like for—" _ him _, she doesn't say. Andrew. "For us. Feeling you die."

Except he does know. "I was hoping it would be easier for you," he says after a moment, looking straight at Andrew "at least easier than it was for me, with my mom. If we— If I'd— If I died, I thought the tether was still new enough that you might come back from losing it."

Andrew looks murderous for a moment before his expression smooths out again.

"You're an idiot," Allison tells him. "A self-sacrificing idiot. We fucking won and you gave up before we could even try."

"No. No, listen—"

"_ You _ listen, Kevin told you we could protect you—"

"That was before he found out—"

"—and we fucking _ begged _you to stay—"

"He would've killed you—"

"Well Andrew tore him apart, didn't he?"

Neil’s voice is raw when he says "They promised me they'd save Andrew for last." That, at least, makes them shut up. Allison still looks furious, but she turns her glare to Andrew, as if this is somehow his fault. Andrew doesn't look much better, either. "Listen. This wasn't my father at his best. The Wes— my fami—" he sighs "the _ coven _ was huge. When I still lived in Baltimore, there were more than fifty witches coming and going from all over the country, all of them working for my father. What you saw were his favorites and the best, yes, but they weren't even all there. If he'd come with the entire coven— If I _ let _ you fight against even half of them— I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I'm sorry for leaving, but I won't apologize for not knowing. I did what I could to protect you."

And here is the real magic of his life: they forgive him.

.

They celebrate Christmas five days late, as if there's nothing wrong about it. They bring the Elder Mother gifts, and she puts up actual fairy lights on her tree, and Andrew stays beside him the whole night, still not talking to him but refusing to leave him alone. Neil follows their lead and doesn’t talk about the Omega wolf on their basement nor the still looming threat of death by Moriyama. Instead, he eats Christmas specials they bought with discount and pretends not to notice how his wolves have an established rotation of who gets to touch Neil and for how long throughout the night. The Elder Mother, for the sake of politeness, doesn’t point it out either. It doesn't stop her from smirking every time a wolf leaves his side and is automatically replaced by someone else, though.

He laughs with them and eats with them and sings with them and, later, settles down with them in the living room of the packhouse and mocks Matt for how cuddly he gets when he’s drunk.

A few days later they stay up all night watching the sky and passing around a bottle of champagne as they wait for the ball to drop. Neil puts up a privacy ward five or so minutes before midnight, to protect their ears from the firework’s noise. Allison sits beside him for most of the night, and she’s still technically ignoring him, but that doesn’t stop her from passing the bottle to him and taking it back.

When the clock changes from one year to the other, the sky lights up in colors, and Neil watches his wolves jump around hugging each other and screaming. They’re still gentle when they hug him, even though he’s better, and he protests up until Matt begins to cry on his shoulder.

He feels Andrew’s eyes on him, always watching, and for a moment he considers asking for a kiss. They say its good luck. But when he turns around, Andrew’s expression is so intense, the joking words die on his tongue, and a moment later Dan reaches out to him and the opportunity is gone.

.

Ichirou comes on the second day of January, and he brings three cars of wolves with him.

The moment they park by the pack house’s curb, blocking Wymack’s car and Matt’s truck, Andrew picks Neil up from the couch and carries him upstairs. It’s both undignified and absolutely unnecessary, but also the only time he can remember that Andrew didn’t ask his permission before touching him, so he doesn’t protest the carrying specifically. He does, however, calmly explain to Andrew that his wounds are _ fine now, thank you, so there’s no need for me to stay out of this _. Seth, who is coming up right behind them, shrugs. "That’s not what this is about. He can’t see you, so we’re taking you upstairs."

"He doesn’t _ know _ me—"

"And we’ll keep it that way," Andrew growls. He leaves Neil with Seth and, a moment later, Allison shows up as well.

"I don’t need two babysitters," he tells them.

Seth smiles ruefully at him, already settled on his bed.

"Wymack’s worried I’ll lose control. Not everything is about you, buddy."

"I’m still mad at you," Allison informs him, "but I won’t let _ them _ get the chance to kill you before the asshole does." Neil doesn’t even ask her which one.

He watches from his window as a group of nine wolves leave the cars, one of them surrounded by the others. Kevin greets them by the front door, his fear barely held in by both the pack’s early attempts to calm him and Neil’s rude but effective _ "I will burn your wolf ass myself if you don’t hold it together. I didn’t die for this shit." _

_ " _ Almost _ die" Seth had corrected him from the kitchen. _

_ "Also, too soon," Matt had added from the windows, where he and Dan were watching the street outside. _ It still comes as a surprise for him that they’re willing to joke about it at all.

Neil considers, for a moment, trying to coax Allison into a conversation, but he just can’t be left out of this. He’s pretty used to the looming threat of painful death, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t rather see it coming. He knows for a fact Kevin’s words won’t make a difference on Ichirou Moriyama’s decision: they will either die or not, and no amount of Alpha posturing, begging or flattering will change today’s outcome.

So, Neil doesn’t feel bad for turning around and saying "I’m going to take a nap."

Seth and Allison send him a look like they think he’s crazy, which is probably correct, but they don’t call him out on his bullshit.

This time, when he buries himself on magic, it’s not from thrumming bark to singing grass that he jumps, but from ink to ink to ink, until the world looks bigger and longer than normal. King’s tail snaps from side to side, and Neil hears its voice complaining _ ‘Do you even realize how invasive this is?’ _ But this is exactly why Neil made it in the first place, for protection and vigilance, another pair of eyes to watch his back. _ 'King is a free cat,' _ it says, and Neil can’t even begin to consider the number of references it made through the years that were completely lost on him. _ 'It was torture,' _ it agrees and Neil smiles.

Sharing his familiar’s eyes is almost as uncomfortable as trying to understand the flashes of impressions of the pack’s hunts from the forest’s pseudo visions. Its vision is human, but the angle is all wrong and seeing his pack from near-ground level just feels weird.

Ichirou doesn’t even react when he sees King perched on the couch, watching him. The man beside him is older, tattoos peeking out from his suit jacket’s collar. The wolf on his other side passes close enough to the couch to notice something’s strange and stops to sniff at it and frown, but he doesn’t comment before going back to his alpha’s side.

After the last of them goes down the stairs, King jumps from the couch and makes its way towards the basement. Kevin stays behind, which is far from unexpected but also rather disappointing, but both Dan and Andrew follow them down, allegedly acting as Kevin’s Second and Third in command.

With this many wolves down here, the basement looks way smaller than it actually is, especially because half of the space is blocked by the silver line that keeps Riko away from them. The Omega stays on the far end of the room, huddled in a corner, and Neil can’t help but think of how pathetic he looks.

King is the one to wind around their legs and stop right in front of Ichirou, looking up at him to ask _ ‘Should I let you in, or let him out?’ _

Dan sighs, then explains “It’s our witch’s familiar, it doesn’t understand politeness. I’m sorry.”

Ichirou either didn’t pay attention to Dan or doesn’t care enough to answer. “Open,” he tells the cat, instead. It doesn’t answer either of its questions, but it still obeys, turning around to swipe at the line of silver, creating an opening big enough for two men to go through.

Riko growls at them, but the moment he puts his eyes on Ichirou, he goes dead silent again. The first one to go inside is the witch, eyes shining bright, and Neil can’t help but feel respect for how calm he is, as he reaches out a hand towards Riko and tells him something in Japanese. Even more surprising, the Omega whimpers, low on the throat, but doesn’t move at all from where he is curled into himself.

Two of the other wolves go forward and grab for Riko, who doesn’t even struggle against them. The others filter in one after the other, slowly forming a circle around the Omega, all of them still barehanded, until Ichirou raises a hand and the wolf closer to him takes a gun out of his jacket and hands it to him, the safety already off. There’s no ceremony to it. Dan sucks in a breath, finally realizing they aren’t here for an extraction, and Andrew’s expression darkens, but neither of them does anything to stop Ichirou from pointing the gun at his brother and pulling the trigger.

It’s so ridiculously fast. Simple, even. It takes a single silver bullet to put Riko Moriyama down.

Then the Alpha of All hands the gun back to the wolf that handed it to him, turns around and walks back upstairs. King runs after him, leaving the other two to deal with the group of wolves who are covering Riko’s now-human body with a white cloth. Ichirou doesn’t even glance back once.

Kevin is waiting for them by the front door, looking pale, but he’s steady on his feet. When the Alpha of all stops right in front of him, he says "I believe this is compensation enough for the grief he caused you," as if talking about paying back for a broken fence or something equally innocuous.

"Of course, my Lord." Kevin’s short bow must satisfy him, because Ichirou leaves right after. The Alpha of All’s second nods towards them before getting into the car, as a show of politeness more than out of actual respect. The others don’t even glance behind them, loading the trunk and getting into the cars in a matter of minutes before driving away. King watches them leave, but Neil jumps away from it and into Merry’s eyes, follows them until they’re out of the wards and driving towards the highway.

Neil comes back to his own body surprisingly quickly, breathing in and out slowly before he opens his eyes. Seth is sitting with his back to Neil’s bed, but Allison is standing right beside the door, and she notices the moment he’s back.

"Well?" She asks, not even bothering to pretend he was actually taking a nap.

Neil doesn’t even try to hold back the sharp smile on his lips.

.

"You wanted to kill him," Neil says, later, when he finally finds where Andrew is hiding. The house’s roof wasn’t exactly designed for someone to sit on, but Andrew doesn’t strike him as the type to care so he doesn’t comment on it. Neil’s ribs are still tender, though, so he chooses to stay by the window on the girl’s room that gives access to the roof. "Riko," he adds, when Andrew turns around to face him.

"He’s dead. I don’t care either way."

"You say that, but I believe it less and less. You also say you don’t care about me."

"That’s because I don’t."

Neil grins, and he knows the moment Andrew realizes he just played into his hands and will have to hear him say something really stupid. It’s a _ Look _. Neil has most of them listed by now. "It’s tobacco smoke and whiskey, for me. I didn’t know you drank."

Andrew, true to his character, puts on his _ ‘I’m surprised but don’t want to admit it so I look like I heard nothing instead’ _ face, and says "I have no idea what you’re talking about."

"The ozone I can guess. It’s strong enough for even me to smell it when I use magic. But is there anything else?"

"No. Shut up."

Neil hesitates for a moment, then changes his mind about getting on the roof. Except the moment he _ tries _to go through the window he gets stuck with one leg out and one dangling, and ends up falling head first on the tiles. "Ow," he manages to get out after some shuffling around. "I might need some help. Maybe. I think I'm bleeding."

There's a put-out sigh and firm hands on him, helping him move around until he's on his back. Andrew is staring down at him with a small frown on his face, and Neil can't help but reach out a finger to smooth it out. "Don't," Andrew says, voice still flat despite the clear show of emotion. He lets his hand drop and contents himself with watching the frown deepen.

"Andrew." There's no answer, but he doesn't look away either. "Andrew," Neil repeats, and smiles. Andrew's frown deepens into glowering. "Andr—"

"What."

It comes out mostly as a growl.

"I’m not going anywhere," Neil says finally. "You don’t have to be so on edge about this any—"

"There is no _ this _," Andrew says, voice even. Neil’s smile doesn’t even waver.

"Right. _ This _ is nothing." He pulls at his side of the bond, and pretends not to notice the shiver that runs through Andrew’s frame when he feels it. He looks down at his arms, probably thinking Neil’s wards betrayed him. Neil doesn’t tell him he’s thinking of the wrong bond. Later, maybe.

"Exactly," Andrew says through gritted teeth, and backs away from Neil to where he was sitting before, by the roof’s edge.

"Exactly," Neil repeats amicably, and looks away from him and to the sky above them. It's a pretty sky. Few clouds, no threats of rain. It's still cold as fuck out here, though. "Now, in a completely unrelated note, what are your thoughts on… Saltwater?" Andrew glares back at him and he doesn’t even try to hold back his smile "Oh, is that so? How about rain? No, no. Let me guess again, it’s storms. Lightning storms and saltwater."

"Fuck off."

"It doesn’t have to _ mean _ anything, you know. If you tell me no, then it’s no. I won’t talk about it again. I know me being your tether is already hard enough."

"You’re a walking disaster," Andrew agrees, and Neil just can’t stop himself from saying

"Don’t you mean…"

"Don't you fucking dare."

"... A brewing storm?" And starts laughing, mending ribs be damned.

"I hate you. Ninety-nine percent of the time the mere sight of you makes me want to kill you."

Neil’s laughter withers and dies out, his voice quiet when he asks "I can work with one percent. Is this a permanent percentage or is there any way I can bring it down?"

Andrew doesn’t answer, doesn’t even speak for a long time. "I won’t change for you."

"I didn’t ask you to."

"I don’t owe you anything. You don’t own me."

"Andrew, that’s not what this is about."

"You will ask me," he goes on as if he’s not even hearing Neil talk. "Every time."

"Of course," Neil agrees promptly, "always."

"Don’t fucking _ ‘always’ _ me," Andrew growls, but he does come closer again, movements fluid as he crosses the roof towards the window. Neil grins at him, when he’s close enough for them to touch.

Finally, Andrew closes the distance between them and reaches out to place a hand over Neil’s heart, his nose hovering not an inch above Neil’s own.

"Andrew," Neil mutters, "yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Explanations are in order.  
As some of you might know (I made a post explaining everything on my tumblr: https://belladonna-queen.tumblr.com/post/188999965715/you-rlly-be-playing-with-my-heart-by-holding-onto ), this year has been hellish, at best. I'm graduating in three weeks from today, which means writing my end of course paper and presenting it, which I did, this Thursday, and I passed with a full mark, which is amazing and absolutely beautiful and I've never been happier. THEN, there's also the Master's course, that I ALSO got into (I know, I'm so fucking floored you have no idea, I'm dying). BUT, before getting the results I had to study like mad and write a lot of very taxing chapters and sit through a whole week of tests and interviews to get into the program, so I think you guys can imagine how much of a trainwreck I've been these past weeks.  
Anyway, these last three weeks were the worst and best weeks of my life, but also I'm just really happy I could finally find some time to sit the fuck down and rewrite the original epilogue into something better fitting of this story. I really hope you enjoyed reading Running with the wolves as much as I enjoyed writing it. You guys have no idea how much your comments and kudos and bookmarks meant to me. I'd sometimes read some of your comments just to remind myself I am, in fact, capable of picking up words and putting them in sentences that make sense when read. And, really, reading your thoughts on something I put so much love into is so good and gratifying!!  
tl;dr: I swear this delay wasn't some assholish way to annoy you or get messages or anything like that. I had my reasons, and I hope you'll understand.  
Thank all of you for sticking around until the end. I hope this is the ending you hoped for.  
See you next time ;)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [swallow your pride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21076976) by [wyverning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyverning/pseuds/wyverning)


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